


Two Thumbs Tall

by DONBLUTH69



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Slow Burn, Thumbelina AU, believe it or not i am writing this seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-07-15 06:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 25,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DONBLUTH69/pseuds/DONBLUTH69
Summary: Born in a world too big for her, Corrin has spent her whole life trying to build a place where she fits in. The human man she calls Grandfather tells her that the outside is dangerous, but his stories of his past life as a knight only motivate and inspire her to try to be stronger, not just for herself, but to make him proud and prove she's a dutiful daughter.By the age of eighteen, she's begun to feel unsatisfied in ways that she doesn't know how to fix anymore, watching the humans who grew up with her start their adult lives as ignorant of her existence as they've always been. But the sudden arrival of a wounded bird and a wary prince begins to make her aware of a world of quite a different size- one that might have room for her in it, or might be even more dangerous than the human one her grandfather has always tried so hard to shield her from.Corrin finds herself grappling with difficult questions. When you don't quite belong wherever you go, what makes the place you live a home? And to what lengths will she go to find people she belongs with and a place she can fit in?





	1. A Long Time Ago

**Author's Note:**

> hello my name is really DONBLUTH69 due to a horrible mistake made at birth and i am VERY QUALIFIED to write this fanfiction. i like aus where leo and corrin aren't even sort of related and also i like birds and taking a long time to get to the point.

A long, long time ago, or at least a long time in the minds of swallows, there lived a little girl about two thumbs tall.

 

Her name was Corrin, which meant “maiden”, more or less, and at her height, in a world full of humans who dwarfed her height, it was hard to imagine how anybody might ever see her as much more than that, though she might grow old and grey in the meantime. But for all that her world was small, her life was busy and busy enough to be getting on with, for fashioning clothing and levers and pulleys and all the little makeshift devices needed to live in a house built for humans whose hands dwarfed her whole body took up a great deal of her time. Her grandfather helped as far as his clumsy human hands could let him, and, in her eighteenth year, his human-sized home was practically half hers. Ramps and stairs and platforms and all the mechanisms she might need to live her life as he did covered every corner, every part of the house, that was, but the outdoors. That was her grandfather’s strictest rule: at two thumbs tall, whether she was maiden or mouse would matter little to passing cats and foxes, after all.

 

Still, she watched the world pass by the windowsill she slept perched in at night, and sometimes sighed as men and women met and talked and laughed and cried and lived their big-people lives. To see them head home of an evening, she could almost dream she was amongst them: from the height of the sill, their figures seemed smaller.

 

And on these evenings, when she sighed so loud that her grandfather could hear it from where he sat, warming himself by the fire, he would always scoop her gently up and carry her to the arm of his chair, telling her the same story he always did, which, mysteriously, always helped.

 

“Many years ago,” he would begin, “The youth of this country went to war with men and gods. And some of them came back grown, and some of them came back wounded, and some came home not at all. And some,” he said, with a pause, “Would have given fair anything to return home, but found they had no home to return to.”

 

Corrin would always pout at him for starting this story so grimly, but he would laugh and ruffle her hair, reassuringly, a gesture which took but a single light tap on her tiny head.

 

“And one such youth, burdened with the lives of the friends he had lost and the pittance he was paid for his efforts, wandered the countryside like a hungry ghost until he found a home very much like his own and swore that no harm would come to it. And, having learned the value of a home, he spent his life protecting it, but in his twilight years, he found that so focused had he been on ensuring he did not lose what he had, he had missed his chance to gain more. To start a family, and to see his children become fine adults themselves.” He would often pause here, to mull, and to poke at the fire. “But he was too old to have children,” he demurred, then leaned in conspiratorially.

 

“Or so he thought.”

 

He would give it a moment for the suspense to sink in, the way he had done since she was newborn, and it somehow always worked, maybe because the rest of the time he was so very stern, or maybe because of the dim, dramatic light cast by the flickering fire. “Until one day, a witch came to town. A witch who looked like a child herself, but was ancient as the songs they sing at temple, a witch who offered the old man the kind of miracle that you seldom see in this, the twilight of the gods. Shunned by the villagers, who feared her magic, the lonely old knight offered her food and shelter for the space of an evening, half on a foolish whim.”

 

He would reach over to the hearth and pluck a chestnut from the roasting pan, small enough to fit between his fingers, but bigger to Corrin than her whole head, and exclaim, “And in return, no coin she offered, but a seed, which she pressed into the palm of his hand, advising him that plants sometimes keep the best company. The old knight laughed, but his heart twinged to lose a guest, so he planted the seed and watered it and, ah! In time, it began to bloom. And when its petals finally unfurled, there in the flower lay a sleeping girl, with ash-white hair, the same as the color of the flower itself. And though she was but a little thing, the effect she had on the knight’s life was enormous.”

 

She would grin every time and push at his arm and tell him to tell her a better story. And he, protesting that he had never  _ claimed _ to be any kind of storyteller to begin with, would go to the shelves she was too small to reach, and read to her from a real book. Stories of magic, stories of romance, things that would  _ really _ stop her sighing, and make her feel freer than the men and the women who walked outside her window could ever really be. And when he ran out of stories, or none of the books they had around the house felt quite right, her grandfather would tell her stories about knighthood, the kind, she suspected, that once might have made him sign up to go to a war that he spoke of only with sorrow. To her, a girl who had never stepped outside the house, his regrets seemed distant and incomprehensible when he told so many wonderful tales, and as many times as he might caution her about the wide and wicked world, in her heart, knighthood meant all that he was to her: something strong, and brave, and sturdy.

 

And her grandfather recounted stories about princesses and damsels and maidens like her namesake, tried his best to make the makeshift handkerchiefs and scraps of silk she wore into shapes that were more feminine than the a rough tunic, but when she begged him for chores she could help him with, he did not tell her to sew or sweep or cook. He taught her to take up a needle and fend off rodents, for fear one might scurry past her in her sleep, and knowing that they were the one outside danger he could not protect her from: getting a cat to deal with them, after all, was far out of the question. She teased him as he stood beside her, fixing her grip on the needle, and called him a drill sergeant, but when she faced her first rat in the dark pantry cupboard, she was glad that her muscles already knew how to move through her fear.

 

They had celebrated the next morning, with, of all things, a tea party, and the dark shadow on her grandfather’s face made it seem to Corrin as if he had rather wished the lessons could have stayed lessons, that she would never have to be more than just a little maiden living on the windowsill. She had thought perhaps to mention it, but something about it all frustrated her, though she couldn’t say what. The celebration had been so very thoughtful, and her grandfather so very dear trying to dote on her, after all. So she sipped her tea from an acorn cap and spoke only of pleasant things, but at night, she redoubled her efforts to fight off mice, and by day, she thought of devices, and, alone, lying in her bed, she would tell herself that if she just kept working hard, she could build a world that would fit even a girl just two thumbs tall.


	2. A Little Life

Corrin’s grandfather was no longer a knight, but he was not, by any means, retired.

 

While most men his age let their sons take over their work and their wives and daughters run their homes as their idle days passed drinking and lounging in the shade, her grandfather had no such family and no such options, and much as he might praise Corrin for her clever inventions or creative mind, she was neither known to the villagers she considered neighbors, nor even capable of plying a trade amongst them. Sometimes, laughingly, her grandfather suggested she cobble boots if she was so inclined to support him, just like the elves in stories, and she would scold him for being silly. He was not getting any younger, after all.

 

Still, though he had no family besides herself, her grandfather had been watching over the village for years. The villagers loved their old knight, and especially loved that even now that his bones ached and his joints creaked, he put his armor on every day and patrolled the outskirts of their little hamlet, and Corrin didn’t need him to tell her or or invite her to come with him to know just how fond they were of him. Every day she saw him leave the house at dawn, and by noon when he came back, his arms were laden with gifts of food and fabric and other such goods from the people he must have protected since they were very small. Sometimes children would follow him home, yelling and laughing and playfighting, and he would always grumpily shoo them off, but they would wait for him sometimes the next day, ready to walk with him on his route even though their mothers couldn’t get them up so early for all the gold in the kingdom. The children would beg and plead to see his house, to eat his snacks, and to hold his swords, but he would tell them he did not want their noise to scare off the brownies that helped him with his housework, thank you very much, and firmly shut the door.

 

Adults came calling less, but were sometimes allowed in, as they were not so prying as a child could be, and Corrin could simply hide. Her devices sometimes drew a raised eyebrow, but her grandfather commanded too much respect for the villages to question his taste in knickknacks. Corrin would listen to him talk to them sometimes, try to imagine which face she saw from her window belonged to the detached voice she heard from her hiding place. Her grandfather was not much for gossip, and the talk was mostly practical, about the running of the village. Esteemed persons such as the mayor might call one day about training some hardworking youths in combat, and someone so low as a beggar might call the next to take a little shelter from the rain.

 

She felt like she knew the villagers through these conversations, although she played no part in them. Her first crush had been on a disembodied voice she had heard from the cupboard as a girl, on Wren, who had gushed over her very first inventions and brought her grandfather whittled toys of her own that Corrin still cherished dearly. And Cyril, who had a hiccuping laugh and a hundred puns and no future whatsoever as the second son of a poor priest, and who had broken her heart when he admitted to her grandfather that he was leaving to find his fortune. Better still were the aunts who came to gossip at her grandfather on temple days about all sorts of matters, a window to a whole other world that she would listen hungrily to, trying to connect all their stories to the voices she heard come visiting. Was Remela the one who had taught Grandfather her best bread recipe? And was her no-good brother Falin the boy who he caught trying to climb the roof? Sometimes she pressed her ear so hard to the cupboard door that she feared it left a mark, and those nights were always the nights she scanned the world outside her window most eagerly, trying to piece it all together in her head.

 

Whenever she asked her grandfather for news of the village, he would say she was no better than all those gossiping aunts, and she couldn’t fault him for that.  He would sometimes take pity on her, and tell her something or another that he had heard, but he had no mind for gossip, and could never quite remember the details. Sometimes she suspected that it was his stoicism which drew these confidences from the villagers more readily than anything else. It was hardly fair, she always argued, that he was the one who cared so little, for she would go and ask all these people her questions herself if she could.

 

She could not remember ever asking him whether she could try, although sometimes she yearned to. But she remembered his story, always the same, about the childlike witch who had given him the flower which birthed her, and she heard the aunts fretting when strange cats showed up in their barns or children with hair too fair and fine were born. It was as her grandfather always told her. The great war was over, and there was no room for magic left in the world, let alone in sleepy hamlets during the twilight of the gods.


	3. The Wounded Swallow

The swallow came in May, and Corrin remembered because of the singing.

 

When the flowers began to bloom in the trees and bushes whose branches brushed against her window, Corrin would hear them, the youths of the town, coming out of a morning, decorating the town in garlands, and scattering petals on the ground leading up to the temple. It was, her grandfather had explained, a celebration even he had participated in, or something very similar, once upon a time. A celebration of beginnings and regrowth and love, and it came and went every year, with new youths who Corrin would watch dance into the temple, and eventually woo and wed and become the proud parents of the youths who would celebrate in years to come. When she was a girl, she had always asked her grandfather if there was some way she could go and scatter petals someday, though they were far more cumbersome for such a tiny maiden, and he had consoled her by bringing them into the house. It wasn’t the same, but her bed would smell of flowers until they shriveled and dried, and the soft scent would remind her of the white dresses and dancing and songs.

 

The flower petals in her bed were still fresh and soft, and she was nearly asleep for the night, when what sounded like the faint and untimely ringing of the temple bell roused her from her slumber. She rubbed her eyes, then startled, as the noise was soon followed by a mighty thumping crash. When she ran to her windowsill, she spied the source of the ruckus, a dark mass of feathers that dwarfed her size, lying in a heap against the glass. Her grandfather left the window cracked on fine evenings, and she rushed to get a lever to wrench it further upwards, her hands hovering over her makeshift tools before settling on her needle-sword and bringing it with her.

 

One could never be too sure, after all.

 

By the time she finally hoisted the window up wide enough to drag the thing in, it became obvious to her that firstly, it was a large and panicked swallow, secondly, it was still breathing, and thirdly, its wounds had not come merely from flying into the windowsill. There was something lodged in its wing, which dripped blood over the white petals her grandfather had gathered for her. Perhaps a thorn, she thought, but she didn’t dare yank it out until she could clean the wound.

 

The bird did not put up a great deal of resistance to her ministrations, but once she grasped her hands around the thorn and began to tug, it started to squawk and struggle. She shushed it and clenched her teeth as she tried to pull it out faster, and when it finally gave way, she collapsed against the wall, then dropped the thorn, trying as fast as she could to bandage the wing before the bleeding started again. The bird seemed to have lashed out from shock and fear, and as it slowly realized that she intended to help, its panic subsided. She crooned to it as she worked, one of the Maying songs that the youths in the village had sung that evening, and it lolled its eyes at her, occasionally flapping its wounded wing when she had to touch a sore spot. When she was done, it was still breathing heavily, as though it was in pain, but instead of struggling, it eyed her cautiously. She smiled at it, and, placing a hand on its good wing, stroked it absently. In the morning, she would ask Grandfather if it could stay until its wing healed, she decided. She struggled to close the window again, and settled down to sleep.

 

It took some time after she woke to remember the thorn, lying where she had cast it on the floor. She nearly tripped over it on her way to the kitchen to greet her grandfather good morning, and as her foot hit against it, it did not roll across the floor as a thorn ought to, but flopped stubbornly to one side. Grasping at it groggily, she frowned and turned it over and over in her hands. There must have been sleep dust in her eyes, because for all the world it seemed to be a teeny tiny arrow.

 

She heard a soft, ringing chime, and turned to see the swallow, up and about, and hopping inquisitively around her. In the chaos of the night before she had not noticed what she could now see tied around its neck, surely the source of the noise which had woken her in the first place: as small as the arrow, a swallow-sized ribbon with a bell. She wondered, for a moment, if somebody owned this swallow, but did not quite like the idea that somebody would let their pet fly into her window, or let it end up in such a bad state to begin with. She grasped the bell around its neck and untied it, thinking that at the very least, if she could rope one of the mice with it, she might manage to listen for where they built their nest and surprise her grandfather with something a little more than tea party-worthy. The swallow, whether it belonged to someone or not, did not seem to particularly mind her borrowing it, and, in fact, seemed rather glad to be rid of it. It certainly hopped around her more enthusiastically than before, and, when she took it to show her grandfather, it even trilled merrily to greet him.

 

“Well then,” he asked, “Who’s this?” His eyebrows raised when he saw its wing and asked, “You haven’t been hunting more than mice, have you, little maiden?”

 

Corrin insisted she had not, and explained the events of the night to him. She begged him to let the swallow stay, and he made a few obligatory grumbles about taking in strays, but when Corrin swore up and down that she would take care of the bird, he chuckled.

 

“Always so valiant!” he said, and waved his hand dismissively when she asked him where, exactly, he thought she had learned to be that way. “All right, all right. I suppose the bird can stay. Just…”

 

Corrin bit her lip anxiously.

 

“Just, I suppose that means no eggs for breakfast for gods know how long, hm?”

 

Corrin laughed and assured him that she preferred toast.

 

“And the thorn you found, my little maid,” her grandfather continued. “May I have it?”

 

Her face lit up. She dashed to grab it, bringing it back to him, and he examined it very closely, a mangled splinter of wood between his giant fingers. She looked up at him hopefully, and he gave her a rueful smile.

 

“It does look like an arrow,” he agreed, “But it’s only a thorn. Perhaps I’ve been telling you too many stories of knights after all?” He crushed the thing between his fingers, flicking it out the window.

 

“Unfortunate for our friend though, that he flew into a pricker-bush! Let’s keep the windows shut tight for now, so that he mightn’t do himself more harm than that.”


	4. Feathered Friends

The swallow mostly slept for the first week it stayed with them, and Corrin would sometimes watch it, but dared not get too close. It was still skittish at times, especially when she moved to touch its wings, although she yearned to study them, and the way it looked at her, she could swear sometimes that it was thinking. She had never been so close to an animal except to the creatures she hunted, and though she knew that most full size humans kept pets, she had never had one of her own for reasons that were obvious to anybody. Even if she dared consider the swallow to be a pet, it dwarfed her. Her grandfather joked from time to time that she could make it into a fine steed if she really cared so much about all his knightly stories. She laughed, but she knew from the way it fidgeted sometimes that the bird was merely tolerating her because it had no other choice.

 

True to his word, her grandfather had kept the window shut, and for a few days, to her surprise, he did not even go on patrols, which was almost offensive, considering that she had proved to him time and time again that she could fend off worse than angry swallows if the occasion demanded it. But he seemed to be just as interested in their visitor as concerned about her, and the first time he went out again, it was only to borrow a book on the anatomy of birds back with him that they pored over together.

 

“Don’t name the thing,” he warned, as they read about wingspans. “It can’t really become your loyal steed, you know.”

 

Corrin had not named it, but the damage was already done. She had stopped hunting mice to take care of it for the time being, and she would tell it stories in the evenings as she stayed up watching it. Starting, of course, with the story of her birth, she cycled through all of the tales her grandfather had told her, and she liked to think that it even enjoyed them, especially the tales about knights, that it always seemed to pay the most attention to, affixing her with its unusually piercing stare. She was so used to listening in on conversations that, no matter how one sided the swallow’s company was, she found herself quite unable to stop talking to it simply from the novelty of being the person who got to have something to say. But she liked to think that even though talking herself hoarse to amuse a swallow was about the same as talking to herself in an empty house, it did some good. The swallow became more and more comfortable with her, and, just like that first morning when she had taken it to show her grandfather, it began to follow her around the house, hopping along at a distance which closed with each passing day, until finally sometimes she could even lightly run her hand along its feathery side for a few stolen seconds. It was a wild animal, and barely tolerated this indignity from her, let alone her grandfather, who it would hop away from and shoot scolding cheeps at, but she felt like slowly she was getting to know it, and in a way that was different from hearing the voices of the villagers day in and day out.

 

It was, and she would think this word cautiously to herself at times, her friend.


	5. Swallows and Wrens

A little more than a week since the swallow came, Corrin woke with a start to a knock on the door, and though her bed could not be seen from the doorway, scrambled under her covers. She was soon glad she did, for at the noise, the swallow erupted in such loud cheeping as to draw anybody’s attention, and the unexpected visitor had barely said hello before they rushed to the window to see.

 

“So _this_ is why you needed that book,” Corrin heard Wren’s voice say from the world outside her hiding place under the sheets. “And you made it a little bed, even! Though it seems to prefer that mess of fabric, hmm?”

 

Corrin heard her grandfather’s hasty footsteps which belied the calm chuckle that he gave Wren. “Call me an old fool,” he murmured. “Can a man mourn an empty nest that was never full to begin with?”

 

Wren’s laughter was so loud, so close, so lively. Corrin couldn’t resist, and surely Wren was busy watching the swallow, right? Slowly, painfully slowly, she lifted up a tiny corner of the blanket she was hidden under to take a look at the person that Wren’s voice belonged to.

 

Her breath caught in her throat.

 

Looking down at the swallow was a girl with soft black hair dressed all in white, and Corrin realized, the dress was meant for Maying. It made sense, it was still May, and it was late enough in the morning that the festivities must have just barely ended for the day. Wren was beautiful with flower petals caught in her tangled locks, her eyes as bright and clever as Corrin thought they must be for all those years of listening to her talk. She wondered, with a pang, if Wren had been dancing with Falin, like all the aunts had speculated she might. She wondered what else she had missed while her window had been closed at her grandfather’s insistence as the swallow recovered, even though she knew that even if her window was flung wide open, she was no less missing Maying than if it was shut completely.

 

“I never imagined your hobby was so extensive,” Wren crooned, admiring Corrin’s tiny workbench this time. “All this, and I’m surprised you don’t have a menagerie of little animal friends up here to use it.”

 

Corrin’s grandfather wagged his finger at Wren sternly. “Not a word to the rest of them,” he admonished. “Unlike you, _some_ people still respect me in this village.”

 

Wren grinned. “Of course, of course.” she mocked. “We must think of the legacy of our famous knight!” She and her grandfather stepped away, and suddenly they were just two disembodied voices again, muffled from where Corrin lay still in her bed. She heard Wren collect her book and promise her grandfather the sort of presents Corrin was certain that she would be making use of sometime if Wren remembered, and then the door shut as she left.

 

Corrin counted to ten, and then rushed to the window, watching her go for as long as she could, finally able to attach a face to the voice, to the name. That black haired girl was Wren, Wren, the girl who brought her gifts, her first crush as a child, a girl who was more aware of the presence of a bird than she was of Corrin herself, a girl who, the aunts all thought, would be married to Falin by next year. Wren. Eighteen years and she had never even known what she looked like.

 

“The youth in this village get damned cheeky in May!” her grandfather swore, setting aside flowers Wren seemed to have brought him as a gift for her intrusion. “It’s a good thing you hid, little maid.”

 

Corrin smiled faintly, and she wasn’t quite brave enough to open the window that evening, but she pressed her cheek against the cool glass and watched Wren walk home with a redheaded boy. She had heard Wren’s booming voice right up close, seen the height of her, but from the vantage point of the window, the pair of them, arm in arm, looked to be about her size.

 

She was startled out of her reverie but the sensation of something soft, and realized that she had begun to tear up. She turned to see the swallow behind her, settling down to nest against her back, and she turned away from the window to bury her face in its feathers, an indignity that, for once, it bore stoically.


	6. The Midnight Outing

As the swallow recovered, daily life had to continue, and when her grandfather saw fit to begin his patrols again, Corrin thought it best she resume her own. She had almost forgotten about the scheme she hatched when she saw swallow’s bell, but, thinking of everything that had happened the past week, she found she was glad for the distraction now. She dug for where she had hidden it under her covers and, sure enough, she found it right where she left it that first day the swallow had crashed into her window.

 

The bell jingled softly as Corrin held it up to the moonlight, idly turning it this way and that.

 

She hadn’t told her grandfather about the bell because she meant to surprise him, but looking at it in close detail gave her pause- it was a complex thing, beautiful and intricate, and a shame to waste on mice. Like the thorn that she thought was an arrow at first, it was the right size for her hands, and that was rare and delightful. Whoever had tied it around the neck of a bird for a lark was wasteful indeed, because it seemed to her like it could come from no place but the fine doll sets that she heard were made for human gentry by craftsmen the like of whom never passed through their sleepy village, and whose work her grandfather asked travelers to tell him about at length, but never seemed to manage to procure. She had never minded too much, for she was deft enough herself to make the things she needed, and she’d rather fashion rags to wear than steal the clothes off some doll, but seeing the bell made her wish she could catch a glimpse of the dress that it must have been plucked from, just to marvel at what skilled hands could accomplish with nothing but needle and thread. If she could just see the shape of such a thing, she thought, thinking of how lovely Wren looked in her Maying dress with the briefest pang of regret, she might be able to teach herself to make it.

 

She caught herself, shaking such silly thoughts from her head and turning her mind to other projects. She had been mulling over the thorn in the swallow’s wing, and she had meant to pluck some thorns from the rose bushes outside to try her hand at making arrows from them. That, at least, was far more the kind of thing that was her forte than fashion, but the catch that had prevented her from pursuing that line of thought was that her grandfather seemed to still be quite serious about keeping the swallow safe. Ever since it had arrived, he did not even let Corrin open the windowsill anymore.

 

Still, she thought, he was asleep now, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. If she could make herself arrows, hunting mice would be easier, and it would be worth him getting a little annoyed at her. After all, she reasoned, it was his influence that made her so diligent.

 

She struggled to open the window, and on a whim, tied back her hair with the ribbon, the bell jingling softly as her ponytail swayed back and forth. The swallow, which was seldom far from her side these days, began chirping and singing as it felt the fresh air, and she shushed it frantically. It hopped closer, and for a second she was afraid that her grandfather was right, and it was going to try to escape, but it simply stood between her and the window, tilting its head this way and that and hopping to and fro to get a better view. It had only recently started to become more lively, so Corrin supposed it was getting its bearings still, but it was a terribly inconvenient time to do so. She pushed it gently but firmly back into its nest. On the way over, a flap of its wings dislodged her needle from where it had been propped against her worktable, and, as an afterthought, she took the needle with her, making another shushing noise at the swallow and stepping out into the cool night.

 

From her perch on the sill, she could barely clamber to the rosebushes, and she supposed she should hurry, but even the limited freedom she got from sitting on the sill was always overwhelming to her, and she stopped, gazing out at the village, washed in moonlight. There were still flower petals on the ground from the Maying celebration and flowers blooming in the trees, and she smiled softly. Humming one of the many Maying songs, she tripped over to the nearest bush and, unlike the youths of the village, began pulling thorns instead of petals from the branches. They were still soft and green and seemed as though they would be hard to fashion into anything, but if she dried them, perhaps…

 

There was a soft flapping noise, and for a moment, she thought the swallow had somehow squeezed through the window behind her. She remembered she had not cracked the window so wide, so, fearing a bat, she slipped further into the rosebush, clutching at the bell in her hair and wishing she had not worn anything quite so noisy. She couldn’t fight off anything big, anything  _ really _ big on a narrow walkway like the windowsill, and she wasn’t quite close enough to simply slip back through the crack and slam it shut behind her. She would wait and listen, she told herself, for five minutes. And if, in five minutes, she didn’t hear anything, then she would scurry back inside and call it a night.

 

There was a light tapping noise. She opened one eye. It was not the sound of a bat, but it was very familiar. It was something she had been trying to stifle herself, not moments ago.

 

Very clearly, and very softly, she heard human footsteps, and they were coming closer to the roses.

 

There was a flash of violet light, and a voice, which sounded almost exasperated, asked, or rather, demanded, “I know you’re in there. Come out now, and let’s have a look at you.”

 

Corrin’s mind was racing. She thought about the thorn and the little bell and the footsteps, so quiet as if to sound far away, and she felt her throat go dry. There was no room for magic, she reminded herself, in this sleepy hamlet, in this, the twilight of the gods. There was no room for magic, but… she was here, wasn’t she? And outside the rosebush...

 

The voice outside the rosebush made an impatient noise. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself? Out with you now, the game is well and truly up!”

 

She wanted to answer this voice, but she found that, just at the most important moment, she couldn’t quite find the words. How did she speak to her grandfather? What did she normally sound like, again? Swallowing nervously, Corrin gripped her needle and made sure it was visible, then walked slowly out of the roses, towards the violet glow.

 

Whatever the intruder had seemed so certain to find, she began to think that she had not been it. The glow dimmed, and, in nothing but moonlight, the figure of a boy was silhouetted in her window. He had soft blond hair and a tired grimace which sat uncomfortably on his youthful face. While her clothes were all makeshift, his were obviously finely tailored. He wore armor, too, real, proper armor, and he held a book open in his left hand, which he had clearly just been consulting. But none of this was what struck her about the boy. For, just like she thought when she heard him first in the rose bushes, he was not like any of the humans she had seen go a-Maying year after year after year. He was a boy who, apart from everything else, was just two thumbs tall.

 

Corrin looked as dumbfounded as him as she took it all in, and then her face split slowly into the most irrepressible smile. The arrow. The bell. It all made sense now. They hadn’t been made for some dumb, lifeless doll after all. Someone else made things like she did, and that someone was here, and she found the words that she had been searching for, maybe searching for not just for the past few minutes, but for her whole life.

  
“I  _ knew _ you were real!”


	7. The Wary Prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka "the really long chapter"

It only took the tiny figure before her a moment to regain his composure, and then the violet light was back, blinding her. She squinted, half afraid that when her eyes adjusted, he would turn out to have been a dream all along. But he was still there by the time she could see clearly, his face pale from shock, but his mouth set in a firm, grim line so different from the goofy smile she could suddenly feel fading from her face. She felt an anxious knot start to form in her chest, not just from the fact that whatever this boy was, he was clearly _magical_ , and the aunts in the village had _things_ to say about _magic_ , but from the fact that whatever else was going on, her first conversation with someone who wasn’t her grandfather or a bird already seemed to be going horribly awry.

 

“W-wait!” she stammered, throwing her needle aside and holding up her hands. “I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s just that, well, this is such a tiny village, I mean, not from _our perspective_ , but, you know, it’s only got a couple dozen people in it, and definitely not anybody who looks like me- _us??_ -and--” She could feel her face getting hot. Why was it so hard to talk to people? Why hadn’t Grandfather taught her about that instead of fencing, fixing, and fighting?

 

“I-I’m sorry,” she babbled nervously, tugging at her tangled hair, “I’m… I just!!”

 

Deep breath.

 

“I just think that you’re the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.”

 

The boy lowered his book again, but, Corrin noticed, not _completely_. His gaze was still wary, but it was no longer openly hostile, and, insofar as she had any ability for reading faces, his grimace seemed almost amused.

 

“If _that’s_ what you think of me, you really don’t know who I am, do you?” he asked.

 

Corrin got the feeling that he was half talking to himself. He sounded almost like she did when she was trying to work out a particularly complicated problem with one of her devices aloud. She answered, regardless; “A friend, I hope. Aren’t there few enough of us that we should stick together?” Her voice was still quavering, but she pushed forward and offered, “I’m Corrin,” sticking out her hand for him to shake.

 

The stranger looked at the outstretched hand, and up at the strained but hopeful grin on Corrin’s face. Gingerly, he touched her as if he thought she might scald him, and whispered her name to himself, looking back up at her face intently, as though he was expecting something more.

 

They stood there for a moment, palms lightly brushing each other. Corrin wondered at his touch, after all these years, a hand almost perfectly sized to match hers. His fingers were delicate and slender, and for the first time in her life, she felt self conscious about the calluses on her palms. His hands seemed so soft, and she had to stop herself from pressing hers closer, already terrified that this much contact would scare him away. He allowed her to linger, though when he finally lowered his hand, he examined it as if he thought her touch might leave some kind of residue.

 

Eventually, the silence prompted Corrin to ask, “...Your name…?”

 

The stranger gave her his own crooked smile. “Lady, names are not something that my family gives freely. Nor, I see, do you.”

 

She didn’t understand his comment, but since her continuing confusion seemed to be the key to defusing their tense situation, she laughed awkwardly. “Well, I have to call you something,” she insisted. “What do your friends call you, then?”

 

He waved a hand dismissively. “Gods know. Make something up if you must. Although,” he rebuked, “I don’t remember ever agreeing to be your friend.”  


Brushing aside his condescending tone, she took his permission to name him as proof that he was willing, if not to be her friend, to speak with her longer. If all she had to do was keep him entertained, she thought, she had better choose a good name quickly. She wracked her brain, and the answer came to her sooner than she thought it would. Once she took a moment, it was obvious.

 

“Leo,” she decided. “I-if that’s okay with you.”

 

The stranger frowned. “It’s a terribly _short_ name,” he criticized. “Hardly the grand title you’d give to _the most wonderful thing you’ve ever seen_.”

 

“Not at all!” defended Corrin. “My grandfather’s emblem is a lion, I’ll have you know, and he’s one of the greatest knights who ever lived.” At least, she thought, one of the greatest who ever lived in this village. “It’s regal, just like you.” She gestured at his fancy clothing and wryly also thought of his arrogant tone.

 

The boy raised his hands in surrender. “I rescind my criticism,” he admitted reluctantly. “The name is better chosen than I supposed. I meant no offense to your house, Lady.”

 

Corrin smiled. “Thank you. Um, and thank you for letting me name you. W-would you mind terribly if we spoke a little longer?”

 

He inclined his head slightly in assent. His free hand still held his book aloft, and his stance had become hardly less defensive, but as soon as he agreed, Corrin flopped amicably to the ground, sitting crosslegged and looking up at him. Glancing at her discarded needle and back to her, Leo sighed and slowly followed suit, folding his legs up underneath him with far more dignity than Corrin had seated herself.

 

“I have business,” he said defensively. “I’m not just here for a leisurely chat.”

 

“Well, if your business is on Grandfather’s windowsill, it’s my business, too.” Corrin insisted.

 

Leo cleared his throat. “More than you think, I believe.” he gestured to her flyaway hair. “Who gave you that bell, Lady?”

 

“I found it,” Corrin said. She opened her mouth to ask if it was his and mention the swallow, but hesitated, remembering the gash in the swallow’s wing and the thing she now knew to be an arrow lodged in its flesh. She got a bad feeling about this line of inquiry, so she improvised. “I found it hunting.”

 

She was no skilled liar, and she was _positive_ that her face belied her words. But Leo’s expression did not change as he studied her expression, and if he suspected her of falsehood, he said nothing.

 

“I suppose you found it after you… dealt with the creature?” he asked carefully, fingers steepled in his lap.

 

Corrin nodded, since she did not quite trust her tongue. “I thought it might be someone’s pet,” she said, “I didn’t see the bell until… until after…”

 

She was glad that lying made her feel so wretched, because Leo seemed to interpret her discomfort as grief. “Be at ease, Lady. That thing was no pet. In earnest, I was only half certain of what I was searching for- my retainer shot at it in darkness.”

 

That explained the arrow.

 

“Your retainer?” Finally a chance to ask her own burning questions presented itself, and Corrin seized upon the chance to change the awkward subject. “Is that like your family?”

  
His reaction surprised her. He hesitated, taken aback, but said, “No, not quite,” though his expression seemed to her to become somewhat softer. “But I suppose, like your grandfather, my retainers are also capable warriors.” He gestured at the house. “I take it that your grandfather is a human man. That, too, is different.”

 

She leaned forward. “You mean your retainer is like us!”

 

“Retainer _s_ ,” he corrected haughtily. “In my position, I would not be merely assigned the one. But yes, they are like... _us._ ” He looked her over disdainfully, and she blushed, suddenly painfully reminded of the discrepancy in their appearances- she was wearing a handkerchief, after all, and he was in a suit of armor. Whether or not he was as important as he seemed to think he was, he was certainly more important than a little maid on a windowsill.

 

Rather than let it bring her down, she seized upon it, gesturing at his apparel. “D-did they make you that? Your retainers? I make a lot of things to get around, but I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. My grandfather isn’t very good at fiddly stuff, and I’m mostly good at making devices, so…”

 

Leo stretched out his armored limbs languidly for her to examine. “Hardly. This was forged by the finest blacksmiths, I’ll have you know. Even if you met a hundred knights, I doubt you’d see its like.” He paused, then corrected himself with a slightly bitter laugh. “Well, depending on the knight.”

 

He held up his book, and, her mind still half lingering on how casually Leo had talked about hurting her friend the swallow, Corrin’s first instinct was to flinch, but he merely opened it, stroking the pages gently. “Now, the likes of _this_ you’ll never see again. Only those of my bloodline can wield the tome Brynhildr, and of those still living, only I have the gift. Even if it were to be stolen from me by a jealous rival, they would find themselves completely incapable of using it.”

 

“A-and what does it do, pray tell?” Corrin stammered, eyeing the book like it was about to jump to life and curse her itself. All the horror stories she heard from the village aunts were playing in her head.

 

Leo seemed to notice her nervousness and grinned wickedly. “Shall I demonstrate?”

 

“N-no! That’s quite-” Corrin squeaked, but Leo was already reciting some kind of incantation. The same violet light flashed again, and when she opened her eyes, she saw… a rose bush.

 

It was not the one she had hidden from him in, and even if she wanted to hide in it, that would have been quite impossible, for it was tiny, or, rather, she thought, it was the same size that her grandfather’s rose bushes would seem to be to human eyes. It sprouted right out of the wood in the windowsill, as if the craftsman who built the house forgot to trim a stray branch off the lumber. She reached out, amazed, and plucked a flower from it, smelling it carefully.

 

“It’s real,” she said, and her face broke into the same goofy smile she felt when she first saw Leo.

 

“Of course,” Leo preened. “And it’s not the only thing that Brynhildr is bound to do for me. But I will admit that it is by far the most pleasant.”

 

Corrin touched the bush gently. “It’s wonderful. Will it live long?”

 

“Not long,” Leo replied dismissively, “Without a proper root network or soil. Enjoy it while you can.”

 

“Can I really?” Corrin gushed. “Leo, thank you.”

 

It took Leo a moment to realize that she was referring to him, but when he did realize, he cleared his throat. “ _Lord_ Leo, at least,” he corrected, suddenly collecting himself and withdrawing back into his shell a bit. “I think that’s _enough_ distraction, so if we can get back to the matter at hand?”

 

“Mmm?” Lost in thought, Corrin was drawn reluctantly back to the matter of Leo’s business on her windowsill. Her face fell, and she set the rose aside. “Ah.”

 

Leo held out his hand. “As I said, that creature was no pet, and if it is truly dealt with, and by your hand, I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. For I was tasked to deal with that beast, and it means that I owe you a favor.”

 

Corrin relaxed ever so slightly. “Oh? Oh! If that’s all, please don’t fret over it. It was no trouble, you know, and I doubt I did quite so, um, thorough a job as you would have with your, um, Brynhildr, and your retainers, so-”

 

Leo grimaced. “Maybe so,” he admitted, “But just as my family do not take names lightly, nor do we take favors lightly. And considering my task was twofold, so long as you return that bell to me, my task will be complete. I will be under a _geas_ , which I must fulfill at risk of my honor.”

 

“W-well,” Corrin stammered, “That sounds inconvenient. What if I just... keep the bell?”

 

“Then you will soon see many more people your size, Lady, and not all will be so liberal as to interpret your intervention as a favor.”

 

Corrin laughed nervously. “I just can’t imagine what I would need… Really, I don’t need anything! And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to burden you.”

 

With an irritated frown, Leo clicked his tongue. “Everybody wants something,” he insisted bluntly. “It hardly needs to be complicated, it simply needs to match the size of the service done in the first place. And Lady, you have done me a service, but it was hardly so great a task as to _burden_ me in the repaying.” He got up to his feet and gestured at her. “I could easily bring you anything! For instance, clothes.”

 

Clothes were tempting. Corrin’s makeshift nightdress was by far the simplest thing she owned, but even her finest outfits, if they could be called fine, were not much more tailored than that. A suit of armor even one one-hundredth as beautiful as Leo’s, perhaps, could be useful for fighting mice, and would surely make Grandfather laugh. But if taking the geas was less dangerous than refusing it, were clothes what she truly wanted?

 

She glanced down at the rose at her feet. The white blossoms were so small that, if she chose, she could craft herself a flower crown, and the sight of Wren’s face flashed painfully into her mind.

 

“Come visit,” she requested impulsively, forgetting about the swallow, about the arrow, her misgivings, and all the wary aunts. She handed the bell out for him to take. “Return to this windowsill every full moon, and keep me company as you have done tonight.”

 

He opened his mouth, as if to protest, but thought the better of it, reaching out and grasping the bell in his hands. With a sweeping bow, he promised, “As you wish,” and unfolded what she had assumed in the dim light was some sort of elegant cloak to go with his fine armor, but outstretched were now clearly visible to be some sort of wings. The flapping noise she had first heard in the bushes was explained as he took off flying, but left her with yet more questions which she supposed she had to save until she saw him again.


	8. The Selfish Wish

It was hard for Corrin, when she woke up the next morning, to convince herself that the events of the night had not been some sort of dream. She was rather inclined to believe they were, except that there through the window, the rosebush that Leo had grown for her was still firmly sprouting from the sill. She crept out, touched the petals softly, and winced as the tiniest thorn pricked her finger. It was real, after all, every detail recreated in miniature before her. Alive, though, if she recalled Leo’s words, not for long. She wiped the pinprick of blood on her finger onto her nightdress and found herself wondering whether the rosebush might at least live until the next full moon.

 

The thought turned her stomach, and try as she might, she could not tell whether the feeling was fear or anticipation, so she shook her head clear of such thoughts, changing into clothes she was certain would be barely more acceptable to Leo than the rags she wore to bed. The familiar daily routine was comforting, even if her quickened pulse belied the brief sense of normality. She had met someone her size, the sum of so many of her wildest fantasies, and now that it finally came true, she found that if she did not get dressed and get to work on her day to day projects, the enormity of that fact might make her knees give out.

 

Leading a life such as hers, with so little contact with the outside world, Corrin was well used to distracting herself in even the worst of circumstances, and the way she did it was through her devices. As she sat at her makeshift workbench, she felt the anxiety and memories from the night before clear from her mind like mist fading in the midmorning sunlight. There were inventions she had been anxious to get back to, and they beckoned her, the repairs for the pulley she’d set up in the kitchen, the belt she’d been working on to help her shimmy down human stairs into the cellar, the lamp she was trying to make from a quail’s egg,  the helmet she was trying to smelt from an old coin, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. She bit her lip and threw herself into her work, some of which was fairly simple to accomplish, while other projects demanded some tinkering.

 

The swallow, who had hid itself, she supposed, when it had seen Leo alight on the windowsill last night, reappeared around mid-afternoon, and she felt a pang as she remembered that she had essentially invited a man who was hunting it back again simply because of a moment of selfish impulse. She atoned by overfeeding it, legs kicking on the edge of the pantry as she stole herself a morsel of cheese and salami for her own lunch. The swallow pecked greedily at her meal once it finished its own, and she laughed, holding the food just out of reach and pushing its face away. It tilted its head at her and hopped off to sulk.

 

The door opened and her grandfather walked in, removing his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow after a long patrol he was a little too old for. Seeing the swallow and Corrin perched on the pantry, he smiled a crinkly smile, setting about to fixing himself something to eat so he might join them. As usual, he had come home with gifts of food from grateful friends and constituents, some more generous than others, but considered together, an ample feast. He had a garden like any villager, which he tended daily, but he and Corrin had never wanted for food even despite that. Sometimes, he had once confided in her, he spent more of the way back from his patrols thinking about what kind of meal he was going to make than looking out for danger.

 

He sat at the table, and the swallow flew over to beg for something better than Corrin’s scraps, treating the old knight to its most pitiable cheeps. “Your friend doesn’t seem best pleased, little maid.” her grandfather rebuked gently. “Have you been treating him ill?”

 

His words were meant in jest, but that and the lion on his dusty old tabard made Corrin’s stomach turn. It was so tempting to tell her grandfather everything that had happened and just how much reason the swallow might have to be unhappy with her, but she doubted he would believe her when she could barely believe herself, and even if he did, what of it? It would only cause him to fret, and she didn’t want Leo’s visits to be more trouble than they already posed a risk of being.

 

A part of her wondered if she was more afraid of worrying her grandfather, or afraid that he would rightly stop the whole affair, which made her insides flip-flop even more, but she swallowed her anxiety and forced a laugh at his little joke. She asked how his patrol had gone, and he told her what little gossip he could remember, then all the things he noticed more readily- weather patterns, animal tracks, places where the outer walls may need repair. She was happy to listen, and when he asked of her day, she swallowed the truth of the matter and told him of her many inventions, which he suggested improvements to in some places, and wondered at the cleverness of in others.

 

When he set his meal aside, she requested to practice her drills with him, and, with her needle, she mirrored his strikes with a practice sword until dinner, which she insisted she help with. When she was a girl, her grandfather had refused to accept her help with cooking, but over the years, he had relented, and they had found tasks she could do. Shelling beans was strenuous work for her, but she found use for the husks in her work sometimes, and preparing meat the villagers brought was instructive in understanding the anatomy of animals and birds. She had always appreciated these little tasks her grandfather had found for her to do, and they helped her believe that even if she was so small as to have to fear being trod upon, there was purpose for her in this place.

 

Her grandfather’s presence helped a great deal more than any work she could have set herself to doing, though, his declaration that she was becoming quite the chef, his reminiscing about a meal much like this he had once eaten on the eve of a hard battle, the man who had taught him to make it, that man’s particular habits, and his own feeble defense when she accused him of telling these stories every time they made rabbit pie. The routine was soothing, and her grandfather had built their lives on routines. The world she shared with him was small, but it was his traditions that made it feel rich and comfortable, and always had. When had that changed? When the aunts started ruminating on Wren’s marriage? Before Leo alighted on her windowsill, certainly.

 

When, she worried, had she become so selfish?

 

Her grandfather declared himself too tired for stories that night, and the swallow certainly seemed to agree with him. It had already flapped to its makeshift nest, head tucked under its wing, and with a pang, she realized how the events of the night before must have worn it out at least as much as they had her. The full scope of the day’s events, which she had tried so hard to distract herself from, hit her once more, and she felt tired, confused, and desperately aware of how much she needed to rest.

 

She bade her grandfather goodnight, but though she felt as weary as she did, she found she could not sleep. She tried diligently to wear herself out still further, doing jumping jacks, pacing the floor, studying diagrams at her workbench, and reciting the folktales the village aunts told backwards and forwards, but for all her efforts, all she could see when she closed her eyes and tried to sleep were the flap of wings that briefly blotted out the moonlight when Leo left her with a promise he would soon return.

 

After an hour of these efforts, she hesitated, glancing down to her grandfather’s door.

 

Clambering onto her grandfather’s pillow, she pushed his cheek and begged for a story, one that after eighteen years, he could probably tell without even bothering to wake himself. In the moonlight, up close, his face looked old, more careworn and softer than she remembered. He got up with a grumble, rubbed the sleep dust from his eyes, and lit a candle.

 

“Little maid,” he muttered wearily, “You are lucky I love you so.”

 

Corrin agreed. Her grandfather sighed.

 

“Many years ago, the youth of this country went to war with men and gods…”


	9. Healing Magic

Grandfather was gone when Corrin woke the next morning, as it was a temple day, and all the business of the day began early. She had never gone to temple, and Grandfather never encouraged her to ask about what it was like. He had once said there were some gods that war could not conquer, and that they lived in the heads of men, but still he went to temple because it was important to the villagers he protected, and Corrin supposed that sometimes devotion was different and more complicated than belief.

 

_ “Many years ago, the youth of this country went to war with men and gods...” _

 

Corrin dangled her legs off the edge of her bed, looking out the window in the direction that Grandfather had once told her the temple lay. The aunts spoke fearfully of magic, her grandfather cursed the gods, but they all still prayed, and magic crept into their lives whether they willed it or not. She had always been accustomed to being that uninvited magical creature, a thing which should not be, yet was, and now found that she was coming to terms with uninvited magic of her own. She wondered, if she might seem strange to the villagers, and if Leo seemed strange to her, whether magic and superstition were simply a matter of perspective and context after all. She had never been to temple, thus the knowledge she had of such things was limited by necessity- whatever men thought of such things, her grandfather only spoke of them in stories, so she had invented devices instead of tried spells, and kept her feet, small though they might be, firmly on the ground.

 

She hopped to the ground now, brushing her hand lightly against the swallow, who was waiting for her near her makeshift staircase. It fidgeted a little bit, but abided her touch, tilting its head at her and chirping when she tilted her head back. She informed it that she was feeling much better today, and then, feeling a little more foolish than usual for speaking to a swallow, she started recounting again the story of her birth, fresh in her memory from when her grandfather had sleepily related it to her the night before. It helped her, though she had already told it to the swallow several times, to repeat it. It centered her, even as meeting Leo had thrown her off-balance. But regardless of who Leo was or where he was from or whether his clothes and comportment were fine, she was Corrin, a little maiden, but the daughter of a noble knight, born from a magic flower. Leo could fly wherever he liked, but armed with renewed confidence in her identity, Corrin kept herself grounded.

 

She wondered if the swallow had family, like her grandfather. A home, or even a nest somewhere. Why had Leo hunted it? For food? He seemed too self-important for that, and the bell around its neck had clearly interested him more than meat. Brow furrowed, she ran her hand again along the swallow’s side, as if she might expect to feel something unusual lodged in its feathers, or spy some sort of mark along its flank that would explain the undue attention Leo had afforded it. Was it really a pet, as she had surmised when she first met it?

 

Her absentminded stroking became too much, and the swallow hopped sidelong out of her reach. She entreated it to wait, but it flapped its wings, and cheeped in alarm at the sudden burst of pain it got for its troubles. Its wing was not yet fully healed, Corrin knew, and she shushed it soothingly, taking some grain to try to coax it back to its nest to rest.

 

If she was  _ really _ magic, she thought, watching the swallow settle itself down to rest, she might be capable of healing the swallow’s wing before the next full moon. She had always been as afraid of magic as the aunts, but Leo had shown her something new, something she had never imagined magic could do. She looked out on the sill, where his roses still grew, and found she could still barely believe it. Brynhildr crafted that bush in a matter of seconds, though she had seen how long it took the plants in the village to poke their sprouts from the ground.

 

She held out her hand as she had seen Leo do, and commanded the swallow to heal, but he simply tilted his head at her, drawing back imperceptibly in case cause to try to fly away made itself apparent. She tried to speak to it again, thinking maybe if she couldn’t heal it, the next most useful latent magic power would be some sort of an affinity for animals. Asking it the story of its birth did nothing, and trying to trick it into saying something intelligible by surprising it when it seemed about to sleep was both a dull waste of time and only served to make it cross. By the time temple was finished, Corrin had managed to do nothing but embarrass herself. She decided that, convenient as magic may be, she preferred inventing. At least she could gauge her own ability more easily when it came to making devices.

 

Still, she was a little glad that she was not possessed of the power to fix the swallow’s wing. She had grown used to it, and even if it was once someone’s pet, or prey, or partner, it was still someone she considered a friend. Leo couldn’t replace it, especially being so strange as he was to her, and in truth, she was not ready to say goodbye. She sat next to it as it rested, and spoke, telling it about Leo and all that had happened while it hid, and feeling relief as she confessed, though she knew it could not understand her. Speaking to the swallow was not like speaking to Grandfather or Leo. No expectations, no reply, and no judgement came in doing so, and so she simply took pleasure in speaking her thoughts aloud to somebody, a small indulgence which was, in its way, healing magic.


	10. Wren's Confidence

Today became tomorrow, became the day after, and as the days passed, soon Corrin stopped counting. Even Leo’s face, lit by violet light, became swimmy and indistinct in her mind’s eye, for all the tremendous impression it had made on her in person. It was hard for her to think of something not there when she was so skilled at distracting herself that it was simply a matter of habit, and even if she had not had cause to want to forget, June was a busy month in the village, for it was a month of marriages. Corrin’s grandfather had to attend every wedding that came to pass in all his finest armor as an honored guest, and Corrin loved watching his role in these ceremonies from the window, seeing every villager in their best outfit, and the whole village covered in more garlands than there had been during the Maying. Her grandfather stood out most of all, she always thought, the picture of the brave knights he always told her stories of. The decorative armor he always wore during weddings was nothing like the battered armor that he wore to patrol, and though he often waved aside her enthusiastic compliments with a gruff remark about the getup being as fake as the tales it inspired, it had made him smile the one time she had tried to make herself a set from old spoons and a faded red linen napkin.

 

This year, she found, June felt different. It was strange, for the first time, to see youths she had seen grow up in step with her stand under that arch and exchange vows. And to see her Grandfather kneel in front of them on knees which were getting wobbly and promise to protect their future caused her a little discomfort coupled with that familiar old sense of pride. Everything felt, all of a sudden, a little more personal, a little close, and yet, considering the fact that she watched all these weddings from a window, infinitely further away.

 

One thing was ever the same, though, and that was that the amount of food and gifts her grandfather brought home nearly tripled. If the villagers repaid him well for patrols, they paid him twice so handsomely when the oath he took during each ceremony served as a reminder. The pantry was stuffed full of more food than he and Corrin could handle. The swallow certainly didn’t mind taking a share, but eventually her grandfather threatened that if she let him have any more of it, the damned bird would become too fat to fly by the time its wing recovered. She retorted that he was becoming too old to carry such heavy packages home, and anyway, it was more than they needed in the first place. He protested, but the creaking of his joints belied his assertions, and after one such wedding, Corrin found herself yelping and dashing to hide after the festivities, for she spied two stacks of packages wobbling homeward: somebody was helping her grandfather bear his burden.

 

“Easy now!” Wren’s voice rang out. Corrin heard the door swing open. “Gentlemen first.”

 

Her grandfather’s slow and heavy step was next, and a thud as surely a tower of baskets and bundles that dwarfed Corrin by comparison landed on the table. “My thanks,” Grandfather replied gruffly. “I’m sure you would rather be merrymaking.”  


“There’s time for merrymaking yet,” Wren demurred. “Anyway, Catrin never really cared much for me.”

 

“Nonsense!” Grandfather sat himself down, scooching the battered wooden chair back with its usual painful squeak. “I remember when you two were little lasses, you would always hold hands when you ran after me together.”

 

Wren snorted. “Only because she was so _slow!_ If we were going to become famous knights, I always said we had to train much harder.”

 

Corrin smiled a secret little smile from her hiding place. She remembered Grandfather teaching the village children training drills, that she had always dreamed of one day going off on adventures with them. An old dream now, and one her grandfather had long ago convinced her was best left forgotten, but Wren had swung her practice sword so hard she fell down, and Corrin remembered hearing her voice waver as she tried not to cry when Grandfather brought her inside to bandage her scrape.

 

“You never did take to training, try as you might,” Grandfather reminisced. “Do you still dream of being a knight, Miss Wren?”  


A pause.

 

“To be honest, I think all this is much more inspiring,” Wren admitted warmly. “Seeing all the new bits and bobs every time I come to visit- I remember, you never let us inside when we were little, except me the once-”

 

“When you scraped your knee,” Grandfather remembered. “Gods’ sakes, I didn’t know what else to do. If I took you home bleeding, I would never hear the end of it from that father of yours.”

 

Wren laughed. “Yes, _well_ , it felt special. I _knew_ your house would be full of secrets, and it was! And back then, you said it was all for the brownies to use, but it made me want to make things, too. Fun things. Interesting things! Just like you.”

  
Corrin’s breath caught. They were talking again about her inventions, and her cheeks turned red, though the praise was meant for her grandfather. She wished at that moment to communicate a million questions to him. What did Wren like best? What did she remember from back then? What was she working on now? But though she was magic and born from a flower, she was no psychic, and her Grandfather merely scratched his head at Wren’s proclamation.

 

“My little devices are just an old fool’s hobby,” he rebuffed, causing Corrin to make a tiny indignant noise. “If you’re thinking of a proper career, I suppose you’ll be off to the city then, to be a dollmaker, or clockmaker, or traveling as a tinkerer. Falin’ll be in for a shock.”

 

“Falin…?” Wren asked, then laughed. “You’ve been listening to too much village gossip. Falin and I are like… partners, but… you know, in _crime._ ”

 

“I didn’t hear any of that,” Grandfather warned, covering his ears “You know, they tell me to put a stop to that boy’s antics every other day!”

 

“That’s because he gets caught way more than m-” Wren began, but Grandfather cleared his throat, and she dutifully finished “-any people would believe…?”

 

“I think he, _and any other youths who happen to engage in his sort of antics_ , is a good lad, deep down.” mulled Grandfather. “But he should be thinking more of his future, and less of sticking his foot through other peoples’ roofs.”

 

“Maybe he’d _like_ to think of the future, but everyone just keeps insisting he’s going to get married and have a hundred million kids and help at the store until he’s an old la- _man_.” Wren started putting things in the pantry, a little more forcefully than necessary. Corrin heard the clattering, and then the sigh as Wren caught herself. “Maybe he wants to stay in the village and be a good lad and think about his future, but he feels like he can’t. Maybe--”

 

“ _Maybe_ he should just bide his time for a little bit and collect his thoughts, mm?” Grandfather interrupted. “You tell him that. The wide world can be dangerous for a lad who’s never left home before, and peoples’ minds can change if yo- _he_ works hard to make them see sense.”

 

“Mmm.” Wren said noncommittally.

 

“You tell him that tonight when you youths are out merrymaking.”

 

“Sir Gunter-” Wren began suddenly.

 

“Enough!” Corrin heard Grandfather’s chair squeak again. “This old man is getting weary. Thank you, Wren, for your help. You’re a good lass.”

 

“I don’t need to go merrymaking,” Wren insisted. “If you don’t feel well-”

 

Grandfather chuckled. “Trust a man my age, you’ll wish you had danced more one day. Anyway, running away from village gossip doesn’t make it stop, you know. And dancing with Falin to celebrate your friends won’t make you any more married than you are now.”

 

“Mmmm.”

 

Corrin heard Wren trudge towards the door, but Grandfather called out to her one last time as she left.

 

“Now don’t scrape your knees out there!”

 

This got a laugh from her, at last, and she replied, but Corrin was already crawling out of hiding, the conversation she had heard playing over and over again in her head. She wanted to talk to Wren somehow, to tell her how she felt… _about the future_ , obviously, how she believed in her, how desperately she wanted to be able to lead her adult life in the village, too, and how much more impossible that felt today than it had all the years she had watched the weddings of people who seemed so much more grown up than her in the past. How she felt… How she _felt…_

 

Wren wasn’t walking out with Falin after all. Corrin _felt_ in that very moment like her heart was going to jump out of her chest. It was impossible, she tried to tell herself. These feelings were just as impossible as they had been minutes ago, just as directionless as they had been the first time she heard Wren shriek with delight at her inventions when they were children. There was nothing in the world she could invent to bridge the gap between them, even if she spent the rest of her life trying. But her heart beat fast anyway, and she shut her eyes tight, curling into a little ball on her bed.

 

For the first time in days, she thought of Leo, not his wary stare, his slender hands, or his terrifying magic, but his demeanor. Leo demanded things as if he had no doubt that they were within his grasp, and Corrin, who spent her days fixing her world to fit her, could not even imagine being possessed of that kind of confidence.


	11. Moonlight

The moon waned and waxed, and, gibbous now, it shone through Corrin’s window nightly, reminding her that soon she was scheduled her second visit with someone her size.

 

The fuller the moon got, the less certain Corrin felt that Leo would reappear after all. The rosebush had begun to wither, and she had pressed one of its flowers to remind herself it was real, but apart from that evidence, she had received no more sign of him since he found her that night almost a month ago. It was clear from the way that he acted the night they met that he did not think her terribly impressive, and surely by now something would be occupying him that was more important than a promise made to a maiden in exchange for a bell. He himself had said the favor she had done for him was hardly so great as to be a problem to repay, and honestly, if she had thought harder about it in the moment, seeing the rosebush bloom had been more than enough repayment for a little bell she had only kept on a whim. She was sure that in the course of a month, he would have come to this same conclusion himself, and if he did appear at all when the moon was full again, it would only be to give her his pardons.

 

The thought was a comfort to her most of the time, but sometimes, and not in a way which Corrin would ever admit to, she felt a sharp pang of disappointment.

 

“Little maid.”

 

Corrin was startled from her reverie, turning from the window the moon shone through to meet her grandfather’s gaze. Thoughts of trysts flew from her mind, and her brow furrowed with concern. Was he well, she wondered? She thought he had long ago gone to bed.

 

“I saw you looking at the moon as though you expected it would suck you into the sky,” her Grandfather countered, waving away her concerns. “Enough about my health! _I_ was checking on _you._ ”

 

Corrin could not quite meet his gaze.

 

Grandfather gave her time, and when she said nothing, he sat himself down by the cold hearth and started a fire in the grate. Soon the moonlight was outshone by the firelight, and with its warm glow, the long shadows in Grandfather’s home seemed to shrink, and her worrisome thoughts grew weaker with them.

 

“You have always loved looking at the moonlight,” Grandfather recalled, in the same far-off voice that he sometimes began his stories with, a voice whose tone had always suggested to Corrin, that he did not expect her to respond, but to listen. “And I encouraged you to love it, once upon a time, when you were young, when it was so hard to convince you to stay out of sight by day.”

 

He chuckled, and shook his head. “Yet, I cursed myself for it,” he remembered, “The first time you set off at night to hunt mice and rats with nothing but the moonlight as your witness.”

 

Pause.

 

“Something has changed in you, little maid.”

 

Corrin flinched, she could not help herself, and she opened her mouth to protest, but whatever this was, wherever it was leading, it was a story, and not to be interrupted. Grandfather was not even looking at her to gauge her response, but simply let his train of thought plow forward with or without her.

 

“And in Wren, too, though I was an old fool, too old to notice.” He sighed, and if he noticed that Corrin visibly relaxed, he made no sign of it. “To me, the both of you are still little maids, but I suppose neither of you are so little now as I seem to remember. The both of you prove that to me every day.”

 

He waved a hand at Corrin’s work desk, piled high with inventions and smiled. “I am happy that I could make you a home with me, little maid. I know that you must live in moonlight, that I have made you a home where you are freer by night than by day, but I hope that you are happy, too.” He tried now to catch her gaze, and she wondered if he had been simply too gruff to say what he had to say to her face.

 

She agreed, of course, that she was happy here, and the sharp little sting of disappointment she felt earlier at the thought that Leo might not come was dulled. Her home was here, or as Leo had called it, her _House_ , for if anyone was her family, clan, teacher, tribe, it was her grandfather, who had trained her to fight and taught her to smile, and tried so hard to make his too-big world a place for a girl her size. She might wear rags to Leo’s suit of armor, but she had been raised by a conscientious and dutiful knight, and wore his honor on her heart. Leo could choose to find that wanting, he could break his _geas_ , and it would reflect nothing on her. She was happy here, she reassured her grandfather, and she realized that she meant it with her whole heart.

 

Grandfather stood up, wincing as his creaking joints belied his age. He put out the fire, and as he poked thoughtfully at the flames, he proclaimed, “Well, I have fetched from you the smile I was hoping to see, so this old knight will leave you to the moonlight. Would that Wren’s problems could be handled so swiftly! But even if you are both still little maids to me, I suppose her worries needs must be a little larger than can be dealt with in an evening.”

 

Corrin considered his words long after the embers in the grate had cooled. They gave her strength, but whether she was ready now to face the full moon with no worries was far from certain in her mind. It was true, she supposed, that she was no longer such a little maid as she was back when she still thought she might be friends with every human who came through her father’s door, and the days that she had spent learning the need to hide were now just memories that made the weddings of all those children she grew up with strange and unsettling. Back then, she had been too naive to expect that a tiny girl jumping from a cabinet would elicit anything but delighted surprise from a child twice her size, and after a lifetime of learning otherwise, she found that perhaps she had become overcautious.

 

There was someone her size, and he had sworn on a bell that he would visit her again. If it worried her that he would come, and worried her that he wouldn’t come, she would tackle his visit like her grandfather had taught her, like she had done when she showed him she was not too small to hunt mice. She would try to prepare.


	12. The Second Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have noticed i have no update schedule, this is in order to account for the unpredictable task of fighting the other sixty-eight don bluths. i am sorry.

The full moon that month was the kind of moon that was nearly orange, and seemed slightly too big for the sky. Corrin stood on the sill in her least offensive outfit and shivered, for the night was warm, but her chest felt as though it was full of the bubbling froth on the ale her grandfather poured for himself on these fine summer evenings. She had prepared as best she could for this night, whatever might happen, but until something did happen, minutes seemed to stretch into hours, and every noise startled her.

 

She took a deep breath. The swallow was hidden as best she could manage. She had practiced the things that she wanted to say. The window was cracked as thin as she could squeeze through, and Grandfather had long ago fallen asleep. And if Leo did not come tonight, she could still make use of the evening.

 

Her charcoal and makeshift notebook were propped on her legs as she waited on the edge of the sill. On the one page, there was a hastily scribbled list of questions, but on the other were drawings of possible projects she was determined to use to distract herself from the interminable passage of time. She had spent some time speaking these questions to the night air, hesitantly, experimentally, but as dusk gave way to proper night, she bit her lip, and buried herself in her sketches, as if the harder she focused, the more she could convince herself that sketching in the fine air was what she had meant to sit on the sill to do all along. Yet despite herself, the projects reflected her thoughts, became winglike or knightly or rosy, and she found herself with even more questions to begrudgingly add to the opposite page.

 

After some time sketching, Corrin stretched her sore muscles. The charcoal slipped from her fingers as she stretched them out in front of her, and she fumbled for it for a moment, cursing as it fell to the ground below. That was her sign, she supposed, to pack it in. As if agreeing with her, the temple bell began to ring, its long slow chimes tolling midnight, and she looked up at the orange moon again, sighing despite herself. The last chime rang out, and for a moment there was silence, but then her heart skipped a beat, for she heard behind her the slow flapping of wings, like a bat, or a bird or… or….

 

Or a visitor.

 

Corrin whirled around to look a little too fast, for as much as she wanted to put up a dignified front, she had spent her whole life hiding from people, and she found now that she had someone she could speak to, she had no patience for pretending she wasn’t anticipating it.

 

“ _ Leo! _ ” she exclaimed, and cleared her throat, remembering a little too late how easily irritated he was by the nickname. “Um. I mean.  _ Lord Leo _ , I presume? How kind of you to wait upon me this evening.”

 

Leo was there, silhouetted in the moonlight, and as he landed on the sill, he held out his hand to Corrin, who reached for it as if she expected he wanted to her to touch it the same as they had the first time they met. But he made an irritated noise and dropped her stub of charcoal into her open palm instead. “Lady,” he greeted tersely, “Is it your custom to throw things so carelessly at your guests?”

 

“N-not especially,” Corrin admitted, closing her hand tightly around the charcoal. “I was going to go inside, and then I dropped it by accident.” But the rebuke couldn’t damper her excitement, and despite herself she smiled at the sight of him. “Thank you though, for bringing it back.”

 

Leo arched an eyebrow at the stub of charcoal, and the blackened fingers that wrapped around it as he returned it to its rightful owner. “You are more than welcome to it,” he said simply. His gaze traveled from her fingers to the rest of her, and if it was rude, it was hardly as rude as Corrin, who was staring at him just as intently, and with even less intention of hiding it. He said nothing about her outfit, but he sighed, moving past her appearance, and gestured at the window. “Do you intend to invite me in, then?”

 

“Y- _ No _ !” Corrin’s attention snapped from her visitor to the sill, and she scooched herself between him and the cracked windowpane. This, at least, she had practiced saying to the swallow, anticipating that she might have to keep Leo out to keep her friend hidden from him. “A… A lady’s chamber… Is no place for a moonlit tryst!”

 

“Nor is the sill of a human home,” Leo remarked drily, but he abided by the boundary she had established, and folded himself quite neatly into a sitting position, looking up at her as if prompting her to do the same. She did, and as she did, she tried to imitate him, tucking her legs neatly and fidgeting for a moment, then giving up and settling into her usual cross-legged slouch. They sat there for several moments in silence, regarding each other, this time not with blatant curiosity, but with expectation.

 

Finally, Leo broke the silence.

 

“This is  _ your  _ wish, Lady.” he groused. “And if you would like to spend the whole evening staring, there are some I know who would not blame you, but I hadn’t taken you to be one of their ilk when first we met.”

 

“O-Oh!” Corrin realized that she had been waiting for him to talk, so accustomed was she to Grandfather leading all her conversations. She reached subconsciously for her notebook and its list of questions, but paused. The conversation was already off to such a rocky start that she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit to Leo that she had taken notes for it beforehand. “Well, I was simply,  _ um _ , admiring your outfit.”

 

This seemed to please him, at least, and it was true that it was a very fine outfit, the sort that Corrin had seen on illustrations of princes and noblemen in all Grandfather’s stories. But in truth, the sight of it had disappointed her, for the armor he had shown up in when first they met was far more interesting to her than fine clothes.

 

“You requested to visit with me,” he explained, “As a  _ geas _ . As I told you, my family do not take such matters lightly. The first time we met, I was dressed to hunt. Now I dress for a state affair.  _ Although _ ,” he assured tersely, “There is still room enough to defend myself in these clothes if needed.”

 

Curiosity piqued, Corrin scooched closer. “Is there some kind of armor underneath? Or is the fabric a special kind of material?” she asked, reaching for an ornate sleeve. She paused moments away from touching him, as she saw both how grimy her hands had become and how hard he was staring holes into them, and drew away as if scalded, clearing her throat. “This is my mouse-hunting outfit,” she explained, moving the conversation back to herself. “I’m not sure it’s, um,  _ state affair _ ready, but it’s my favorite thing I own.” She patted the makeshift doublet, hardly caring if her own clothes had handprints on them. “It’s padded, so if something tries to scratch me, it won’t hurt as much. It took a lot of work to, um, make.”

 

Leo relaxed slightly as she drew away, and his brow furrowed as he listened to her explain her outfit. “Our footsoldiers wear similar garments,” he admitted. “Is that the sigil of your House?” He gestured to the lion embroidered messily on her chest.

 

She blushed, covering it self-consciously. “Well, as best as I can imitate it.” On his doublet, she noticed, there was an ornate sigil considerably more skillfully embroidered than her own. “I-is that yours?”

 

A frown tugged at the corner of his mouth, as if she had proposed to him a riddle. “Yes,” he confirmed, “Though most would recognize it; You really don’t have the faintest idea who I am, do you?”

 

“I’ve just lived here with my grandfather my whole life,” Corrin explained sheepishly. “I know everyone in the village, more or less- I never really knew that there were people like me outside of it. I suppose you must be terribly important, I-I wondered about it often this past month, but I really just know stories of the outside world. Um. Stories of knights and such. Human ones.” She fidgeted and tugged at her lopsided sleeve, noticing a little stain that was probably blood that had never quite washed out. Leo had said his clothes were suitable for combat, but they looked as though they had never seen it..

 

“You often speak of humans,” Leo noted disdainfully. “Are you their pet?”

 

Corrin blushed hotly. “I’m the daughter of a knight!” she defended. “Just… A little smaller than him.” She reached for her notebook, and brandished it in front of her, almost in self defense. “And, um, I was actually wondering… I’ve never really had a chance to talk to somebody my size, so I was wondering about a few things, and I wrote them down properly, so since you’re here and all…” She scanned the questions intently for a moment, over-conscious that Leo was watching her with more than a little amusement.

 

“Ah! Here’s a fun one.” She puffed out her chest and gestured to Leo. “When you made roses last time we met, it made me wonder! What flower did  _ you _ grow from?”

 

Leo seemed dumbfounded, moving his lips silently, then shaking his head. “Lady, I am afraid I cannot answer,” he demurred, “For I do not know what you mean.”

 

“Well, for me it was a gardenia blossom, I think,” Corrin encouraged, “Although Grandfather knows very little about flowers, he described it to me at length, and I looked at pictures from botany books from there.”

 

Leo still seemed to be uncertain, so Corrin finally asked, “I thought maybe since you had wings, you might have come from a different kind of flower, and different flowers bloom different people, so…”

 

Realization dawned on him. “Lady, I am from a sturdy lineage. I supposed you were of knightly stock.”

 

“Well  _ of course _ that’s true,” Corrin affirmed. “But my grandfather could not have children at his age,  _ so _ a witch gave him a seed, and he planted it, and a flower bloomed, and  _ I _ was inside the flower. So I’m his child, just not by blood. We don’t see much magic in this era, but I thought since you were magic, you must be much the same. Did your parents come from flowers, perhaps?”

 

Leo snorted. “Deadly nightshade, perhaps?” he joked. “If you knew them, you would not think them to be terribly flowery folk. Brynhildr can grow plants, but it is not so often that I call on it to bloom roses. The  place I hail from has little room for whatever soft magic makes maids in your village.”

 

Corrin thought of Grandfather lecturing Wren and supposed that wherever Leo was from, it must be much like the cities that he had warned her of. Big and bustling, and full of people, although in Leo’s case, people her own size. She could barely imagine it, and leaned eagerly forward, causing Leo to recollect himself, cease his mirth, and draw slightly back. He cleared his throat, continuing, “In faith, I thought you to be one of my own when I first saw you. I had been wondering how you had flown so far afield. I’ve never heard of the magic you speak of, but I know very little of human magic. Few of our kind do since the war.”

 

“It’s rare,” Corrin admitted. “Grandfather can’t really let the other villagers know about me, but I don’t mind. He’s made me a life here anyway, and what I have now is enough.”

 

“Is it,” Leo demurred, and another awkward silence descended. Somehow knowing that, whatever he was, he wasn’t and did not even consider himself to be quite the same as her made Corrin feel lonely, even though, she chided herself,  _ she should be grateful he was here at all. _ She was not one for sulking, but she had assumed so eagerly that they were the same, and a lump was forming in her throat.

 

“ _ Y- _ ” she said, and her croaky voice belied her feelings. She swallowed, looking away so as to compose her face into a proper grin. “Yup!”

 

“Then I am glad,” Leo replied. If he noticed her distress, he pretended not to, though perhaps he simply did not care. “There is very little magic in this world that can turn one life into another. Brynhildr is one such tome capable of doing so, and despite that it may be used to make wonders, it is considered to be magic of the darkest sort.”

 

Corrin frowned. “I don’t feel dark,” she said flatly. “I’m a knight, you know.”

 

Leo grimaced. “Magic isn’t all about monsters and miracles, Lady.” He gestured at her and continued, “Our geas, for instance. Why do you think it binds me to see you tonight, though more pressing matters await me at home?”

 

Corrin flushed. “I don’t know… Your honor?”

 

“Accountability.” Leo said flatly, brushing her comment aside. “Brynhildr responds to me because of my blood and because it has deemed me worthy to bear the consequences of its powers. The ability to make life or change it according to your whims- it is dark because of the heavy consequences of the mage’s demands. Far darker than magic that ends lives in battle, which is a consequence any man might bear.” He tilted his head at her. “Any knight.”

 

“I-I only kill mice,” Corrin rebuked. Leo’s explanation had her at a loss, and she took her time mulling it over.

 

“It sounds like honor to me still,” she decided. “You follow through on your oaths and take responsibility for your actions. My grandfather would do much the same.”

 

“Then he is a fit man for your witch to have left you with,” Leo said, “Although there are few who would call me honorable in this world, Lady.”

 

“You always say those things about yourself,” Corrin noted, narrowing her eyes at him. “But I don’t think a scoundrel would follow through on a geas to a little maiden. I wouldn’t have called you Leo if I hadn’t thought you to be a knight, yourself, you know.”

 

“You barely know me,” Leo rebuffed.

 

“It’s true that I don’t know your crest, or your deadly nightshade parents, or your true name…” Corrin stammered, “But your nature, at least-”

 

There was a clatter from the windowsill, and Corrin’s heart leapt into her throat. She thought, simultaneously, of Leo spying the swallow, and of the gash in its wing from the first night she had met it.   
  
“...What brought you to my windowsill that night? Precisely.” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.

 

There was another pause as Leo drew his attention away from the windowsill, considering her question. “Less than honorable business,” he decided. “And you would be wise to remember that, Lady.”

 

“...Corrin.” 

 

“Pardon?”

 

Corrin blushed as he fixed her with another of his curious stares, but she explained, “M-my name. I, um, I asked you to visit me on an impulse. You’re right, though. We’re the same size, but we’re not the same, so you shouldn’t address me like I’m some lady at court,  _ Lord _ Leo.”

 

“Corrin.” Leo corrected diplomatically. “Have you had your fill of my company now that you know I’m not what you hoped?”

 

Corrin bit her lip. He was giving her a chance to fix everything, to go back to her safe little life, and protect her friend’s well being. She ought to be grateful. She ought to take it. It was a kind offer.

 

It was an honorable offer.

 

“I do not believe that poison breeds poison, Lord Leo. And I can understand that the circumstances of one’s birth can often weigh heavy on the choices we must make in life. If it is easier, we will not speak of our circumstances during your visits, but despite that we are not the same, I don’t think that we are so different as you seem to think.”

 

She went beet red, noticing his gaze dropping again to the dried bloodstain on her outfit, and muttered, “I-I’m sorry if that sentiment offends you.”

 

“I envy your candor, Corrin.” Leo remarked. “In my experience, it is one of the impossible luxuries of a sheltered life.” He stood up, straightening out his finery, and hesitated, then gingerly offered her his hand, tutting only slightly when she pressed her palm to it in confusion and he had to grip it himself, pulling her up much less gracefully than he intended.

 

“Still,” he hesitated, letting go of her hand, “You choose your words more carefully than most I’ve met who share that luxury.”

 

Corrin laughed. “Next time I promise not to write them down first.”

 

This teased a faint grin from Leo, though it was still more of a smirk than a smile. “Until next time, then.” he said, and made his leave without even wiping his hand clean.


	13. A Congregation of Aunts

For once in what felt like forever, Wren’s face wasn’t the first foggy image that entered Corrin’s sleepy head when she woke up, face pressed into the swallow’s nestling feathers. She sat up in bed as soon as she woke, filled with a restless energy she couldn’t quite name, and replaying every inconsequential word she had shared with Leo the night before so that she might not forget them for the month that must pass before his next visit.

 

She walked to her inventing desk and swept the stray papers and parts off it, tapping her fingers frantically on its surface while she gathered her thoughts. The swallow cheeped petulantly as it hopped after her, but it did not quite reach her ears yet.

 

What was it she wanted to do with all these thoughts in her head?

 

She had sketched diagrams of wings in the past month, thinking that they might be some sort of invention that Leo had made, but having had a chance to see him again, speak to him again, they seemed to truly be a part of his body, something organic but maybe magical, and if so, even if they had been grafted onto him, they were well beyond her ability to reproduce. No, it was no longer the wings that made her curious, or rather, not just the wings, but the person himself. And that, she thought, was it. Not love, like the thousand tiny needles driven into her heart when she heard Wren laugh, but the energizing feeling she felt when she was ready to start a new project, but applied, for once, to a  _ person _ . Someone she was allowed to know.

 

She smiled a crooked smile and let herself enjoy this realization, this feeling, the anticipation that maybe she could make a friend.

 

At this point, the swallow pecked at her hair, and she yelped, looking sheepishly back at it. Wishing it a good morning, she dutifully went to find it some breakfast, and deal with her own stomach, suddenly rumbling now that the rush of excitement from the night before had washed over her completely. She could not help but tell the swallow of all that transpired that night, however, partly to  _ reassure _ it that she was being  _ extremely careful,  _ and partly, because she was sure that all her little words were lost on the bird, to sort things out for herself aloud.

 

She was so busy with her soliloquy that she almost did not hear the door creak open until it was too late, but the swallow startled, flying into the roofbeams, and, heart pounding, she barely managed to grab hold of it and borrow a bumpy ride to safety. Whoever was coming into Grandfather’s house was not alone, for there was a loud and cheerful chattering that, had she been paying  _ attention _ , she scolded herself, she would never have missed.

 

“ _ Ladies! _ ” she heard Grandfather say, extra loud, as what was surely a warning for her come slightly too late. “I promise you, Wren herself told me that there was absolutely nothing between her and Falin.”

 

This set the gaggle of aunts that Grandfather seemed to have collected on his patrol cackling. One of them wiped a tear from her eye, patting Grandfather’s arm with a wrinkled hand.

 

“A bachelor like you can hardly be expected to remember what it was like at that age, Sir Gunter,” she reminisced. “I was just like Wren when I was a lass- so bashful!”

 

“ _ And _ if your father had heard anything about you walking out with one of the lads, he would have had his head,” chimed another, setting the whole group giggling again. “Although I think even  _ my _ father would have had a thing or two to say about a scamp like Falin.”

 

“That Wren is just right for him,” another remarked. “He needs a headstrong girl to keep him in line, and _she_ needs a family to make her a little more mindful.”

 

Corrin felt her cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment on Wren’s behalf, but for some reason, this observation elicited more laughter from the congregated aunts. Her grandfather’s face remained suitably grave, at least, and that small mercy was the only thing in that moment that was keeping Corrin from ruining her years of hard work and revealing herself to give his guests a piece of her mind.  _ Aunts! _ They kept the village lively, but every villager was equally a victim of their idle gossip.

 

“I think,” Grandfather said gravely,  “That Wren is plenty mindful. She seems to have thought long and hard about her future.” His voice carried nicely over the din, but the aunts seemed displeased by his staunch refusal to engage in their flights of fancy. The one who had patted his arm the first time patted it again, a little harder. Corrin could hardly tell from her high vantage point, but from the way that Grandfather rubbed his arm, it seemed almost like a light slap. It would take more than that to make Grandfather think twice, Corrin thought smugly. If anything, that kind of rebuke would only result in a hurt hand.

 

“Oh, she has her flights of fancy,” that aunt countered, and sure enough, she was rubbing her sore palm as she spoke, “But she’s their only child, you know, and do you think that any decent parent would let their only child go off gallivanting into the blue, never to be seen again?” 

  
_ This _ comment hit its mark. Grandfather’s eyes could not help but be drawn to the windowsill where Corrin made her bed. “A fair point,” he conceded, and his concession seemed to appease the aunts.

 

“Anyway,” said the first aunt, with a self-satisfied tut-tut, “Even if she  _ didn’t _ meet a bad end out there, goodness knows what would become of the family. Who would take care of her mother and father in their old age, with such a child, and their only one, at that? No, Wren must marry. And Falin may not be a  _ provider _ , but at least he can handle her little eccentricites.”

 

“ _ Handle, _ ” one of the other aunts chuckled, “I’d say he  _ enjoys _ them.”

 

This set them all off again, and as they chattered amongst themselves, Grandfather’s gaze scanned the room, likely to assure himself that Corrin had time to hide. If she wasn’t so fuming angry, Corrin could have devised a way to let him know where she was and put his mind at ease, but even her pleasant thoughts of the night before had flown right from her head, and it was all she could do to simply stay quiet and stay put. Already, she was making the swallow nervous, and who knew what the aunts would say if they knew that Grandfather kept  _ wild birds _ in his rafters. Falin would hardly be the only known scamp in the village then.

 

Whether or not he spied Corrin, it seemed he was satisfied she was hidden well enough, for Grandfather ceased his scanning and cleared his throat. “Ladies,” he interrupted, as the aunts began to gossip in earnest,  “May I remind you that you had business with me?”

  
It took a moment for his words to sink in. There was still a great deal of unfinished business to discuss amongst themselves, and Sir Gunter had already made plenty clear that he had no desire to be helpful with hashing out the love lives of the village youths, after all. But eventually, they managed to find the thoughts that they could bear to leave half-finished, and bit by bit the conversation died down. Then, as a unit, the aunts turned their terrible gaze upon their loyal knight, who found himself not quite up to meeting it. He cleared his throat.

 

“Er. Take your time,” he encouraged. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

 

The aunts gathered around him, putting in their tea orders, and when every aunt had a cup, though not exactly the cup they wanted, as Grandfather only had a bitter black brew, the ringleader began to speak.

 

“Sir Gunter,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially, “How many years has it been since you came to our village?”

 

Grandfather chuckled. “Why, hardly any time at all, it feels like some days! And others it feels as though I have always been here since the time of gods and men. But no, surely some of you remember. It wasn’t long after the war, and we were all youths then, just about to think of marriage ourselves.”

 

“And none of us bold enough to ask you!” one of the aunts exclaimed. “By boiling bones, the first time my father saw you, he was half afraid you were some kind of feral creature, yourself!”

 

Grandfather laughed. “The war would not have been won if humans could not fight like fearful beasts when cornered. But I will admit that I was a sight to behold back then. It was the kindness of your fathers and your mothers and, of course, of  _ you _ that eventually brought me back.”

 

The aunts clicked their tongues, some of them shaking their heads with disdain for the dreadful topic, some looking concerned for poor Grandfather, and all obviously brimming with questions they could not quite dare themselves to ask. For once, Corrin could not blame them. Often she had wondered about the war, and Grandfather only willingly referred to it obliquely.

 

“Surely,” Grandfather said, collecting their cups, “You did not come simply to remind me of old times.”

 

The most vocal of the aunts hesitated, but the rest of them were watching her with anticipation. She began, “Well, Sir Gunter, I’m sure it’s nothing… Nothing at all! But lately, we’ve all noticed things going... Missing around our houses. I’m sure it’s nothing, of course!”

 

“Nothing big,” murmured another aunt,

 

“Nothing you’d  _ really _ miss,” added a third,

 

“But you know how people get,” said the first aunt wretchedly. “ _ Some  _ people, not  _ us _ , but  _ some people _ , some of the younger folk, think it could be…”

 

“Fairies.” finished the second aunt.

 

An uncomfortable silence fell in the room.

 

“It’s a silly thing to bother a knight with,” said the first aunt, her words all coming out in a rush, “Of course. But...”

 

Sir Gunter raised a hand to silence her. “I understand.” he said gravely. “I remember.”

 

The aunts deflated with relief. “Of course, none of the younger people do,” said one.

 

“My daughter in law actually suggested we leave  _ milk _ out!”

 

“I  _ told _ Cleric Anselm, we ought to teach them better about these things.”

 

“Well, for now, I wouldn’t worry,” Grandfather reassured. “Mark my words, it’ll be a coincidence, or at worst, it’ll be that Falin of yours up to some mischief.”

 

The aunts all agreed that  _ of course _ it was something like that, and none of them had  _ ever _ thought otherwise, but some of their eyes fell, Corrin noticed, on the tiny devices and furniture scattered across the house, and not in the admiring way that Wren’s did.

 

“Talk to your children,” suggested Grandfather patiently. “I’ll be sure to be extra vigilant, just in case their little flight of fancy is true. And if they won’t listen to you, they can talk to me. I have plenty of old scars to show them.” He flashed the aunts an unusually mischievous grin, which set them tittering with laughter. Slowly, the talk turned back to Falin, and what sort of trouble he had caused this time, and then, by degrees, to marriage, not just his and Wren’s, but all the youths of the village that the aunts so concerned themselves with, and while this distracted them, Grandfather managed to shepherd them out the door.

 

He closed it firmly shut behind them, and sighed deeply, running a gnarled hand through his long hair.

 

“Fairies,” he muttered, rubbing his temples. “Nonsense!”

 

Clapping his hands, he called, “Little maid! It’s quite safe now,” but Corrin did not come right away to greet him, for she was looking in the direction of her desk, covered in diagrams of wings she had drawn based on what she could remember of Leo’s, mind racing, and thoughts of Wren as far from it as they were when she first woke.

 

Leo was not like her. And she had promised not to speak of his circumstances during his visits, but…

 

But she could not pretend that she did not want to know.


	14. The Sore Spot

“Every day our little friend gets stronger,” Grandfather mused, examining the protesting swallow’s wing.

 

Its flight into the rafters during the dreadful descent of the aunts had been a stroke of good luck for Corrin, but a surprising one. For a month, the swallow had not seemed to even be able to attempt to fly, but apparently it had merely not wished to. It still didn’t seem to be able to fly very far, very well, or very fast, but it could get around the house without hopping after Corrin, if it really had to. Corrin was pleased, and told Grandfather as much as he examined the bird book he had borrowed, but somewhere in her chest, she felt a tiny pang of regret. She had only been counting the days until she saw Leo again for the past month without realizing that she had also been counting the days until her _true_ first friend might really leave her.

 

It was a good thing, she told herself, thinking of the sorry state the bird had been in when they first met. The swallow had never belonged in Grandfather’s house to begin with. It ought to go back and find its family, build a nest somewhere, and be free where it belonged.

 

She only wished she could see it.

 

Corrin stroked the swallow’s side absently that night, lost in thought as Grandfather set up the roasting pan for their evening snack. Only when he asked her what book they should read that evening did she startle from her reverie. Grandfather laughed when she asked to read the anatomy book, shaking his head, and patting hers with a single, light tap of his finger.

 

“I’ve had enough talk of veterinary medicine for one night, little maid. We’ve done all we can for our friend, and he seems to be recovering nicely. You cannot read somebody better, much as it might make our lives easier if it were so.”

 

Corrin hesitated, and her next request was soft and low, and seemed to give even Grandfather pause, though she could hardly tell- for a split second, she fancied his expression faltered, but his laugh was even louder once he had collected himself, though to _this_ request he seemed happy to acquiesce.

 

“Fairy stories!” he said. “Someone’s been listening to the aunts, I see. Do you fancy you’ll fight fairies off like mice, little maid?”

 

Corrin turned beet red and insisted that she was merely feeling a little nostalgic- after all, when she was a child, the stories Grandfather told her of her birth had nursed a healthy interest in fairytales.

 

Grandfather’s smile turned warm and he hesitated over the books on the shelves.

 

“I recall you always enjoyed this one,” he said, plucking a particular story about a knight who could only speak in rhyme from the tallest shelf.

 

Corrin did, and there was little magic in it save for the curse the knight was under, but it only took a bit of reading for the story to enchant her all over again. She always provided the voices with the stories she _really_ liked, and the knight’s increasingly frantic recitations had always delighted her to perform. Grandfather provided his own commentary as usual, for the hundredth time mentioning he had a friend in the army who suffered _the selfsame curse_ , and who was thus forced by all the knights in his cadre to help them draft poems to their various loved ones, despite that he’d never so much as kissed, let alone courted anybody. Corrin found herself falling into the easy pattern of chiding him, saying his story always changed ever so slightly, and that was how she _knew_ it to be a lie, but Grandfather returned her comment how he always did, retorting that when she got to be his age, one or two little details wouldn’t matter to her, either.

 

By the time they reached the end of the story, the knight had been well and truly run ragged across this and that kingdom, and Corrin’s voice was equally hoarse. Grandfather had cracked and eaten almost all his roasted chestnuts, and the swallow had flown off after a particularly dramatic moment where Corrin had yelped and startled it. She was not used to it leaving so readily, and looked off for a moment to try to see where it had flown, half afraid it had really left her, though she knew all the windows and doors were closed.

 

While she was distracted, Grandfather got up, putting the book away, and returning to his chair to tidy up the cracked chestnut shells he had dropped carelessly to the floor. He asked Corrin if she needed one for one of her devices, and she took one just in case, although by now she had enough empty nutshells to build a whole tiny navy.

 

She looked up at the bookshelf as she dragged the nutshell to the side, and regretted getting so caught up in telling stories. She had meant, after all, to find out about Leo, and even if there was some tidbit she could glean from the books she had read as a child, the only time she could see such cumbersome things was when Grandfather selected them for her.  


She hesitated, looking down at the chestnut husk, and, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles turned white, she asked if Grandfather had _really_ known a friend who was cursed.

 

Grandfather sighed. “Plenty, some of which never survived to see them broken. The war was more magical than mundane, you know, and the layfolk that ended up in suits of armor were more susceptible to magic than most.” He saw her crestfallen expression, and gently amended, “Magic is not all bad, you know. It brought me you.”

 

Corrin replied a little too quickly, she knew, she assured him, or at least, she had been _thinking_ lately about such things.

 

“Aunts,” grumbled Grandfather, running a weary hand through his hair.

 

“My girl-- Little maid. You have nothing to fear from magic, for I will always protect you, be there one war or twenty, be there war which never ends and rages all over this, that, and every kingdom that our rhyming knight traveled. Think of mice, think of birds, and think of all your clever devices- you do not need to take more burden upon yourself than that.”

 

Corrin looked down at the empty shell she held in her hands, and up at Grandfather. There were words she could not say, could not even feel the shape of, and thoughts that were fuzzy but urgent in her brain. How could she tell him his assurances were already proved false? How could she tell him she had done her best to make his promise foolish when she had invited a man who seemed to be a fairy to visit her every month by moonlight? She had had no reason to justify her actions- everything she had done flew in the face of the knightly honor behind her grandfather’s oath. Rather than protect their shared home, she had simply acted on foolish whims time and time again.

 

Instead, she smiled, bade him a very good night, and dragged the chestnut shell to her desk, where she found the swallow nesting nearby. She ran a hand gently over its wounded wing and sighed with something almost like relief when it stirred from its slumber to deliver her a protesting cheep.

  
Its wing was still sore. Somehow, though it was wretched of her, the fact that it still wasn’t _completely_ healed made her feel a little lighter. Even if it could leave with a little struggle, while it was still wounded, it had no reason to, after all.


	15. Of Fruit and Fairies

As July wore on, the last of the weddings the village was like to see that year safely passed, and the Aunts’ furious whispers about Wren and Falin died down to a lazy murmur. Grandfather nearly threw his ceremonial helmet into the corner once the last ceremony he had to attend was successfully drawn to a close, swearing that the blasted thing was far too warm to wear in July, but carefully polishing it that evening despite himself. Corrin smiled a secret little smile as she watched him work, taking a rare chance to catch a glimpse of her warped reflection on the metal’s surface.

 

Usually when she watched Grandfather polish his ceremonial armor, she took the chance to study the design up close, in hopes of refining her imitation of it in her next attempt to invent a smaller set. How she looked had never been of great concern to her, but the way that Leo looked at her made her wonder if there was anything much to see apart from the unacceptable clothing choices. The face she saw was skewed on the rounded helmet, but no matter how she squinted at it, she could not see anything terribly interesting to look at. She ran her fingers through her hair, which was always stuck in wavy tangles, to little avail. The color, at least, was nice, she thought, because Grandfather always said it was the same color as the flower she came from. Her eyes, however, offset the charming effect. They were blood red, which, she supposed sourly, better reflected Leo’s comment that a life born as hers began was a powerful dark magic.

 

She realized that Grandfather was watching her fix her hair as he worked, and blushed, sticking her hands under her legs and stammering excuses. He laughed uproariously at her reaction.

 

“If you’re not careful, little maid, you’ll be the talk of the town after they’re done with Wren. Youth!”

 

Corrin did not suppose she would mind _that_ so much if people happened to be discussing whether she and Wren might get married to each other, but the thought was so farfetched that she could not help but reply with a strangled laugh of her own, tucking her hair behind her ear, out of sight and out of mind. There was no point in fretting about how she looked, she told herself. No one in the village could know of her, Grandfather did not particularly care, and if she hoped to impress Leo, she didn’t think all the time in the world to learn to look nice would be enough to catch up to his tailored robes and lavish armor. _He_ probably bathed _every day_. And not in an empty cup, either.

 

Thus, she occupied herself elsewise, and she had plenty to think about, for the month was already nearly half over and she had yet to learn much about fairies, despite begging Grandfather for fairy stories every night. Grandfather loved the familiar, and after the first night she had asked, seemed especially wary about distressing her, for all the stories he told were ones he had visited with her as a child, and if there was any sort of fairy in them, they were wicked, or slow, or subservient, and not much of a character at all, let alone anything that felt it might be drawn from reality. The nobles and princes in the stories he told were also not much like Leo, for they were far humbler and more heroic, and about this Grandfather complained as loudly as he complained about magic and knighthood and glory, for he said he had never met a lord commander that did not put themselves first, and the good ones were either thick as bricks, or soon shuffled to a more favorable post. At these times, Corrin remembered Leo’s barb about how candor was the sign of a sheltered life, and could not help but smile. Were they not who they were, she thought Grandfather and Leo might even get along. But if Grandfather was not quite a storybook knight, and Leo was not quite a storybook noble, and neither were forthcoming with any sort of information she could use, she was not quite sure how she should proceed. She could invent devices to help her with all sorts of things, but she could not pull knowledge from the air, and she could hardly go out and borrow books from neighbors and traveling scholars like Grandfather did when they needed to learn how to help the swallow. She wondered how Grandfather would react if she simply admitted to him that she wanted to learn more about little people like herself.

 

As dusk settled and Corrin mulled over this conundrum, a knock came at the door. Before Grandfather could set down his helmet to answer it, Wren’s voice called, “I brought some leftovers from the banquet!”

 

Corrin was already scrambling to hide, but upon hearing Wren, she paused, and tried to find a hiding place where she could at least see what was going on. Scurrying into a cabinet, she cracked it ever so slightly, and saw Wren teetering under the weight of several baskets of cold food, as Grandfather held the door open for her.

 

“Aunt Zinnia _insisted_ ,” Wren interrupted, as Grandfather began his customary protests. She pitched her voice high and breathy, waving her hands for emphasis as she set the baskets down and reenacted the scene, saying _“After all, who knows when we’ll see such a feast again!”_ Plucking an apple from the basket, she took a bite from it and chewed thoughtfully. “I’m starving,” she admitted. “The dancing took _for_ ever, and Falin is all left feet when he’s nervous.”

 

“Is it going well with Falin…?” Grandfather asked cautiously, examining the contents of the baskets he was not allowed to decline, and grinning when he found a plate of the smoked ham that Zinnia knew he was especially fond of.

 

Wren shrugged. “Ask Aunt Zinnia! She’s the one who kept pushing me to dance with him.” She realized the implication of her offhanded comment and added, “Falin’s not nervous about _me_ or anything! He’s nervous about all this fairy business. You know half the village thinks he did it.”

 

“And did he?” Grandfather asked sternly, raising his bushy eyebrows.

 

“Well, if _I_ had done it, nobody would have _noticed_.” Wren replied primly. She frowned, tugging at her hair, and amended, “But I don’t know if he did. He usually fesses up if he gets caught.”

 

Grandfather grimaced. “I know from experience,” he assured Wren. “That boy sings like a bird if you put even the littlest bit of pressure on him!”

 

Wren laughed. “It’s good, isn’t it? It keeps him honest.” She saw Grandfather’s doubtful look, and said, “More or less.”

 

“Well, if it’s not _him_ , and it’s not… _certain other youths in the village,_ who do you suspect it to be?” Grandfather rebutted lightly.

 

Wren flashed him a wry smile. “Fairies, maybe? The aunts have been _very_ careful to lecture us about how it’s definitely _not_ fairies as of late, so as you can imagine, all of us suppose that they think it might be.”

 

Grandfather did not laugh, though he usually found the aunts’ antics amusing at best and exasperating at worst. “If you were their age, you would understand what makes them anxious about the idea,” he rebuffed, and Wren seemed taken aback.

 

“Of fairies? Aren’t they _this_ big?” she asked, holding up the apple she’d been snacking on as they spoke. “You and the other adults _never_ talk about this stuff except to tell us made up stories, so I don’t see why I should be scared. Give me a good reason! _Make_ me understand.”

 

Grandfather did laugh this time, but it was a sharp, bitter sound. Corrin shuddered. “Little Wren,” he warned, and his voice sounded almost cold. “I did not fight in the war for your entertainment. There are certain things that shouldn’t be shared… and certain things that _can’t_ be shared, lest speaking of them summons trouble. I have served as your loyal knight since before your parents were born. Have I not earned your trust?”

 

Wren turned the apple over and over in her hands, and did not answer him for a long moment. When she did, Corrin had not heard her voice so quavery since the day Grandfather first brought her home as a child to fix her scrapes and bruises.

 

“Of course,” Wren began, and Corrin admired her for even daring to continue, “But-”

 

“Does it bother you, Wren, when the aunts ask you about Falin?” Grandfather relented, the warm patience that Corrin was familiar with returning to his tone.

 

“Y-you know it does,” mumbled Wren, dropping the apple into her skirt pocket.

 

“Then you understand that there are some questions spoken in jest that hurt more than they help.”

 

“That’s not fair!” Wren protested.

 

Grandfather grinned. “Well then, there’s the only lesson about fairies _I_ can teach you, plain as day: Nothing to do with fairies is particularly _fair_.”

 

He patted her head, dropping an orange from the basket into her other pocket. “I never liked these,” he joked, “So take one for the way home. Tell Zinnia that I thank her.”

 

“Mmm,” Wren agreed reluctantly. She studied his face carefully for a moment, and her own face was obscured from Corrin’s hiding place, but Corrin fancied she saw her fists clench ever so slightly, then unclench and fall to her sides.

 

“Goodnight, Sir Gunter,” said Wren. “I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn.”

 

“When you find out it was Falin, be sure to let me know,” Grandfather remarked, and this got a laugh from her.

 

“I will,” she joked, a little more energetically. “Right after we set our wedding date.”

 

She left, and Grandfather sighed, picking up his helmet and getting back to work. Whatever thoughts were in his head after his conversation with Wren, they must have been heavy, thought Corrin, for he seemed to have quite forgotten about her, and she could not bring herself to snap him out of his reverie and remind him when she crawled out from her hiding place. Therefore, she snuck up to the baskets of food on the table, plucked a few likely looking treats from it for the swallow, and tiptoed to bed, though she found she had thoughts enough of her own to keep her awake for a while yet.


	16. Intrusive Thoughts

Almost inevitably, Corrin spent a great deal of her time in thought- it was what led her to invent solutions to most of her mobility problems, and to love stories, and to learn combat, the aching need to fill up hours of days that seemed to stretch on forever in a house which lent her no purpose other than to live a happy and honorable life. These thoughts were not always kind, nor were they helpful, for it was hard not to dwell on things when she found herself to be bored or unhappy, and  _ those _ kinds of thoughts inevitably led to her getting crushes on humans or inviting strange members of fairy nobility to have a friendly chat. But they were ever present, except for during one part of her day, which was when she went to hunt mice.

 

Mice seldom attacked her, but they were big, and if she accidentally ran into a rat, she could be in for serious trouble. Hunting took up her whole attention span, and she had to be focused in the present if she hoped for success. Lately, she hadn’t been in the right frame of mind for a hunt, what with one thing and another, so, after three weeks, her lack of diligence had led to the discovery that a pulley for one of her platforms had been chewed right through by an unwelcome guest. It had been an easy repair, but Corrin felt embarrassed that she had been so slack in her duties, even if Grandfather might be glad to hear that she was spending less time on dangerous hobbies. So she had cleared her mind and her schedule, and for the past few nights, she had searched for signs of mice, needle in hand, hair tied back, and protective doublet equipped. Her goal was twofold, as always: to dispatch of any unwanted intruders, and to find out if there was a new breach in the floors or walls where they were sneaking in.

 

The hunt was not going well tonight. Instead of finding mice, she found that, try as she might, unwanted thoughts continued to sneak into her head, pulling her attention away from the task at hand in snatches just long enough to miss the soft scrabbling that might let her pinpoint her quarry. 

 

Though Wren had gleaned only a little more information about fairies from Grandfather than Corrin had, she still could not help but feel jealousy. That it was so easy for Wren to ask, that there were other avenues by which she might investigate, that her curiosity was as endless as Corrin’s but so much more easily sated. With no means of here own to satisfy the questions that were plaguing her apart from hoping Grandfather might accidentally drop hints in his stories, Corrin found herself growing ever more fixated on answers that felt far beyond her reach. It was more enticing to think on them than to think of mice, even if the mice were something she could exercise a degree of control over.

 

Her head snapped to attention as she heard yet another sound, too late, and she sighed, patting off her doublet and running her hand along the mechanisms she had been somewhat robotically checking for tampering. She turned around, and found it was no mouse, but the swallow, its head cocked as it hopped around behind her. Now that its wing was healing, its movements were less clumsy, and Corrin had to take a moment to collect herself. She was not used to her friend being able to surprise her like this.

 

She greeted it, setting aside her needle sword, and giving up the hunt for good. Instead, she took the chance to check its wing, which it tolerated for once- ever since it had begun to recover, so too, had the bird become less and less willing to be touched.

 

She wondered how much longer she had with it. How many more visits from Leo would necessitate her friend to be hidden? And if she let the swallow fly free, would it be in danger again, or was that gone with the bell that had sealed her geas to begin with?

 

_ Nothing to do with fairies is particularly fair _ .

 

Grandfather’s warning to Wren rang clearly in her mind. Yet she could not quite make his cryptic warning match what she knew of Leo, who had dutifully formed a pact with her and, so far at least, upheld it, although there was no benefit to him that she could see. She could hardly see why a bell would be worth so much trouble as all that.

 

The swallow finally pulled away, and Corrin apologized to it, complimenting it on how well it looked these days in a low, encouraging voice. It really did look much better, not just with its injuries, but plumper, as Grandfather had threatened it would be if she kept spoiling it, and sleeker. She felt a little proud of this, for even if it was not free of its troubles when it came time for it to leave her, it was surely in a much better condition to make an escape, at least.

 

It would be better, she thought, if it did not leave at all.

 

She was about to tell it as much, but she paused, Grandfather’s face flickering back into her mind for half a moment. Something about the advice seemed to curdle in her throat, and she grimaced, biting back the words. Soon, she told it, its wing would be well again, and it would not have to hide when Leo came calling. Which, the moonlight she had been hunting by reminded her, was going to be very soon now again.

 

Picking up her needle, she asked the swallow for a favor, and clambered onto its back. It put up a struggle, but it flew her to the windowsill, ruffling its feathers when she clambered back to the ground. She thanked it, but this indignity seemed to have been too much for it, for it retreated to its makeshift nest. Usually she left it at that when she pushed too far, but maybe the moonlight or her ceaseless thoughts drove her to approach it in its nest, sitting down at the very edge of the bundle of rags that had become its bed.

 

She had always wished to have companions, and now that she had such a variety of them, she found her life to be complicated and her mind at odds with itself. Patting the swallow’s good wing wearily, she murmured the stories Grandfather had told her over the past month, as if saying them aloud for herself might tease out answers to her questions. Yet she found she could not speak of fairies without thinking of Leo, and thus, each of the lazy, feckless fairies in her grandfather’s tales somehow became slightly more sympathetic in the retelling. She could not help but think of his certainty that Wren and the other villagers would think her monstrous were they ever to see her. She knew herself to be no monster. The mice and rats she hunted were no monsters, either, though they were not welcome in her grandfather’s home. Both she and they were merely living their lives in the way they must to survive. And, though Leo told her otherwise every chance he got, she could not quite bring herself to see him as a monster either. She wondered what sort of life he had led to necessitate such behavior, and whether she would ever know him well enough to ask him herself.


	17. The Thankless Thought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for 500 hits you make me feel as mighty as the 68th don bluth

The third time she met Lord Leo, Corrin was ready.

 

Not to say she wasn’t nervous. No matter how she counted, it was still only her third meeting with someone other than Grandfather, not considering the swallow, who was not quite the same. Nor was her outfit any better than last time, though she had at least tried to scrub off the dried mouse blood as best she could. But she felt more confident after their last meeting. She knew, or, she corrected herself hastily,  _ she was fairly sure _ she knew that Leo intended to uphold his half of the bargain, unbelievable as that was, and, even more incredibly, the last time they spoke, he had seemed to be almost interested in visiting her again. Or at least, she corrected,  _ not disinterested.  _ She felt that, as many questions as she still had, she understood him a tiny bit better, and working to understand a thing had always put her at ease. There was not much to understand about her, she supposed, but wondered nonetheless if, upon thinking of their rapidly approaching meeting, Leo might feel the same.

 

She took a deep breath and brushed off her doublet one last time. Patting her tied up hair, she paused, untying it and shaking it out so that it cascaded down her back again, messy and tangled as ever, though she had run her fingers through it as much as she could bear. She liked the color of her hair. She would keep it down when she was trying to make a good impression, she decided.

 

The swallow was alert, and, after two visits from Leo, seemed to have cottoned on to the fact that tonight something was going to happen. When she went to the window, it cheeped loudly, hopping over to her side and nearly knocking her over. Its good wing beat against her and the window, and she spat out a mouthful of feathers, pushing it off too late to save any of the last minute preparations she had made to her appearance so that, as the long slow temple bells chimed midnight and she squeaked through the crack to the sill below, she was disheveled and covered in down. She landed unceremoniously, and lay there for a moment, mourning the time she had spent trying to comb her hair, or rather, the time she had spent trying  _ in general. _

 

It was hard to blame the swallow. If someone who had shot at her with an arrow showed up every single month on her windowsill, she doubted she would abide it quietly, either, even if Grandfather insisted she put her best foot forward. But she was beginning to wonder if she would ever make a good first impression, and if not, whether it was a blessing in disguise that she had never been allowed to try to make a first impression on Wren.

 

“Good evening,” said someone somewhere above her. Corrin pushed herself into a sitting position, and found Leo leaning over her, frowning ever so slightly, as if someone had just told him a joke he didn’t care for. It was, even after only two meetings, such a familiar expression by now that Corrin would believe his face was stuck that way if she hadn’t seen his rare grin with her own two eyes.

 

“Lord Leo!” she stammered, clambering properly to her feet and giving a bow that was definitely spoiled by some of the downy fluff in her hair drifting downwards as she did so, “Good, um, evening.”

 

Leo’s gaze drifted downwards with the path of the feathers at her feet, and then back up at her face, which was plastered with a smile that she had practiced in the reflection from Grandfather’s best helmet. He cleared his throat, and Corrin felt an embarrassed blush creep onto her face already, but she refused to lose hold of her optimism right off the bat. It sounded  _ different _ from the other times he had cleared his throat like that, she convinced herself. Perhaps it had been a chuckle.

 

If it was, the emotion did not extend to his face, which was now adorned with a far more impassive and practiced smile than her own. Leo bowed elegantly, and returned, “I hope the past month found you well, Lady.”

 

“Corrin,” insisted Corrin, sitting on the sill and inviting him to sit next to her. “Remember?”

 

“...Corrin,” Leo acquiesced. His mistake seemed to ruffle his formal facade, but he sat as gracefully as ever, and far more gracefully than her, although this time she had  _ tried _ . His outfit this month was more practical than the last, but even Corrin could tell it was elegant, covered as it was in the sort of fine, subtle embroidery that would take a team of seamstresses far more practiced than the village aunts months to accomplish. It felt more comfortable to sit next to him, though, dressed as he was, than it had when he was dressed in the fancy attire he had been their last two visits. If she squinted, he looked like nothing more than the son of one of the well to do merchants who passed through the village from time to time on their way to somewhere more exciting.

 

She heard him clear his throat again, a tad impatiently, and she recollected how little patience he had for gaping. She offered, “I-I hope that this month has found you well, Le-  _ Lord  _ Leo.”

 

“Well enough,” Leo acquiesced, acknowledging her feeble effort at conversation. “Though there is plenty that occupies me, as ever there is.”

 

“I-is that so? I’m sorry,” Corrin stammered, “For taking up your time, as always.”

 

Leo clicked his tongue impatiently. “When one does a favor for another, the correct acknowledgement is to thank them.” Looking at Corrin critically, he explained, “To apologize is to both burden and show weakness towards the one receiving it.”

 

“But I really  _ am _ sorry!” Corrin insisted. “It was just a foolish whim in the first place, and yet you have to humor it, and if you’re  _ truly _ busy, then it must-”

 

“Do you find it tiresome?” interrupted Leo. “Spending time with me?”

 

“No, but…” Corrin hesitated, and clenched her fists. “No. I’m grateful. For your time, Lord Leo.”

 

“There’s a better turn of phrase,” Leo acknowledged. “I cordially receive your gratitude.”

 

Corrin grinned a goofy grin. Somehow the phrase was easier for her to say, too. A tiny part of the weight she felt thinking she must be a burden to Leo had been lifted simply due to a slight change of phrase, and she felt her new, more stiffly elegant sitting posture already relaxing into her usual comfortable slouch. “I’m happy to give it,” she said earnestly, and this caused Leo to turn and clear his throat again.

 

“Excellent,” he said in the cordial tone he had greeted her with, but there was a slight tinge of amusement in his voice that he couldn’t quite conceal. “I repeat my inquiry, has this month found you well? I notice there seems to be less blood on your clothes than what I have come to expect.”

 

Corrin blushed. “Well, I gave them a good scrub,” she said, “But I’ve been a bit lax in hunting mice lately, I suppose. My month was busy, too.”

 

Leo gestured at the garden. “Perhaps tending the field? It is that season.”

  
Corrin shook her head. “In truth, the villagers have been occupied with various concerns, and Grandfather has been mediating. I’ve been barely involved, but- ah!” She clapped her hands, turning to Leo, and asked, “Do you know if perhaps-” but hesitated before the words could leave her mouth.

 

“Perhaps…?” Leo asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Perhaps… do you have any good stories to share…?” Corrin finished inelegantly. “Grandfather only tells the same ones several times over, and human books are a little tricky for me. I-I was hoping to distract him and occupy his mind with stories he hasn’t heard.” She had nearly asked him about the Aunts’ suspicions about fairies, but she felt that might be even more burdensome than apologies, and she had already promised not to pry into his affairs too deeply the last time they met.

 

Leo smirked. “Lady, I have very few pleasant stories to tell you, and certainly none that might amuse a seasoned human soldier. Such stories are the delight of  _ some _ of my kinfolk, but I have little use for them these days. They seem to me to have very little bearing on reality.”

 

“That’s what Grandfather says,” laughed Corrin. “Every time he tells me about some noble knight, he’s sure to warn me not to get any ideas in my head.”

 

“As well he should,” said Leo. “Shouting about one’s noble ideals only serves to paint a target on one’s back for those who whisper of their own ignoble ambitions. It’s better to be clever and alive than steadfast and dead.”

 

“But that doesn’t make for a very good story,” Corrin pointed out.

 

“I’d rather inhabit a  _ poor _ story than a  _ short _ one,” Leo rebutted bluntly.

 

“Still, I would rather live my life doing what I believed in,” Corrin insisted, thinking of the wounded swallow. “Even if it brought me trouble. It’s not better to be safe than sorry if you can’t be proud of the life you’ve lived at the end of the day. And I know,” she rushed, before he could open his mouth to interject, “I  _ know _ that I’m naive, but I’d like to think that people are better than they think they are. Like, um, you. Um. For instance.”

 

Leo hesitated, and his next words seemed almost difficult for him to say.

 

“I don’t…  _ entirely _ disagree with you,” he admitted. “I  _ certainly _ won’t disagree with your assessment of yourself. But it’s a fool’s errand to believe that  _ everyone _ is better than they think they are. Not everyone is like you and your esteemed grandfather.”

 

“Like your deadly nightshade family?” intuited Corrin.

 

Leo snorted. “Something like that. We can’t  _ all _ bloom from gardenia blossoms, Corrin.”

 

She smiled, pleased he had remembered to call her by her name without prompting. “Lord Leo,” she asked cautiously, “Do you know of anybody…  _ less than floral _ … who lives around the village?”

 

If Leo’s posture stiffened ever so slightly, or if Corrin simply imagined it, she couldn't quite tell by moonlight alone. His voice was polite again, and seemed steady as he asked, “Less than floral, Lady?” and Corrin regretted asking.

 

“I simply  _ wondered _ , since meeting you, um, whether anyone  _ else _ my size might, um, live nearby, and then I suppose it may have turned to worry, since, um, you always speak so gravely of them. And, um, I…  _ worried? _ That perhaps you were traveling far out of your way, to, um, visit in the first place.” She cursed her lack of talent for lies once more, and now that she was not so nervous around Leo to begin with, she could  _ feel _ him trying to puzzle out her intentions. But unlike her, no sign of it showed on his face, and when he spoke again, his implacable calmness remained.

 

“I cannot account for every one of my kinfolk, but if any were to live this far from court, you would hardly need fear them, for I can’t imagine the kind of pitiable circumstances that would drive them so far afield.” he reassured. “As for myself, I have business which brings me farther from home than this, and, as I believe I told you when first you asked this geas of me, I would not agree to it if it were a burden to repay.” He grimaced thoughtfully, and drew Brynhildr from an inner pocket of his cloak.

 

“However.”

 

With a gesture of his hand, and an incantation in a language that for some reason, nagged at Corrin’s mind, a flower bloomed in Leo’s hand, a rose identical to the ones which he grew for her the first night they met. He held his hand out to her, and she took it uncertainly, looking at it and back up to him.

 

“If you find yourself to be in danger, crush it,” said Leo. “And I will send aid.”

 

“A rose,” said Corrin. “Do you like them?”

 

“The flower of my house,” said Leo curtly. “Not poisonous, no, but at least it has thorns.”

 

“I can’t accept this,” Corrin protested. “It’s too much.”

 

Leo looked around the village skeptically, and back at Corrin. “I doubt that any danger that may befall you here would not yield to your, ah,  _ trusty sword,  _ but if you insist that you want to live your life earnestly, allow yourself to at least accept the help of someone slightly less sanguine. I may not be forthcoming with my ideals, but I thoroughly follow through on my oaths, and I cannot visit a dead maid by any means the knights in your stories would approve of.”

 

“A dead  _ knight _ ,” corrected Corrin primly, but she tucked the flower into her hair, where it stayed, snug behind her ear, and, unfortunately, partly held in place by tangles. “But if you’re sure you want me to have it. Still, I didn’t mean-”

 

Leo arched an eyebrow.

 

“...I-I’m grateful. Thank you for your consideration.”

Leo hesitated for a moment, but inclined his head to acknowledge the remark. “I am happy to give it,” he reassured Corrin, and hesitated again, tucking Brynhildr gently away back into the folds of his cloak.

 

“If there’s anything I can do for you-” Corrin began, but Leo shook his head.

 

“I am under a geas,” he admonished gently. “Do not mistake the obligations I fulfill to you as favors, lest you find yourself making repayments you never owed to begin with.”

 

“Ah,” Corrin hesitated. “Of course.” She slumped slightly, and she could not quite tell whether it was disappointment at being rebuffed when she had finally felt a little comfortable talking to him, or relief that the part where she had to try to stretch the truth to him was over.

 

“I’ll see you next month,” she said, although the pitch of her voice raised at the end of the sentence, a half question that she could still not quite believe the answer to.

 

“Next month,” said Leo, sweeping her a bow, “If I hear some suitable story to amuse your grandfather with in the meantime, I will remember it to you then.”

 

He left Corrin with her thoughts, and the flower, which she almost immediately nearly crushed, but remembered to fumblingly remove from her hair just before she laid herself down to bed. The swallow seemed especially keen on helping her crush it, for it kept trying to peck the flower out of her hands as she did so, and it had to be hidden in the crude drawers of her work bench to give her enough peace of mind to finally sleep.


End file.
